


Say, could that lass be I

by LastAmericanMermaid



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Forgive Me, Hades - Freeform, Humor, I may or may not have snuck my Preacher ship in here, Preacher - Freeform, Slow Burn, give bellamy blake a bellamy break, my take on Persephone/Hades, persephone myth, slight crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 16:50:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11878725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastAmericanMermaid/pseuds/LastAmericanMermaid
Summary: Clarke Griffin ditches a day of classes so she can pick wildflowers and lie in the field, feeling the sun warm her skin after a long, miserable winter inside. She loves the spring, maybe even more than she loves the summer..Bellamy Blake is twenty-five—or, he guesses that’s about how old he is now.Unlike most twenty-five year olds, though, Bellamy has never felt the warm spring air. He’s never gotten chapped lips from winter winds, nor has he felt the crunch of leaves under the soles of his sneakers.Bellamy Blake is the Lord of the Underworld.Well, sort of..(AU in which Bellamy is the surrogate lord of the Underworld, Clarke is his pseudo-Persephone, and Octavia gets her kicks playing matchmaker and sassing the hell out of everyone.)





	1. Sing me a song of a lass that is gone

It’s April, and the weather is finally coming around.

The field behind the abandoned school off of Old Line Road is in full bloom, wildflowers and tall grass growing even taller.

Clarke Griffin ditches a day of classes so she can pick wildflowers and lie in the field, feeling the sun warm her skin after a long, miserable winter inside. She loves the spring, maybe even more than she loves the summer.

She knows that she should really go to class, but she’s sick of it, all of it. The professors, the other students; even her friends. Sometimes, it’s just easier to run the five miles it takes to leave Ark University’s campus behind her. Today, she ran until her lungs constricted and her muscles ached, never slowing the steady beat of her running shoes on the pavement.

There’s only a month left before finals, Clarke knows; she doesn’t want to think about it. Thinking about finals means thinking about _after_ finals, going home to her mother and her mother’s constant nagging.

(All Abigail Griffin wants for her daughter is success. Success in her chosen field, and nothing less. Never mind that the field is one Abby has chosen for Clarke.)

So, instead of going to another bio lecture, Clarke had laced up her sneakers and tied her hair into a ponytail. Her roommate and best friend, Raven, had swatted her on her way out, telling her to keep her phone on, just in case.

(Raven is an engineering major who works as a mechanic in her spare time; the ever-present axel grease on her fingers left little smears of black on Clarke’s bare arm.)

So, Clarke ran. She ran until she reached her favorite spot, where the dilapidated old grade school building sat, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. enquire

Hardly any cars ever passed by on this road, and the sound of birds chirping and insects humming and breeze rustling the tall grass is so peaceful, Clarke feels like she might cry. It had been a rough year, and now it’s almost over.

In the summer, she’d found out that the boy she’d been dating had a long-term girlfriend he’d never mentioned. The girlfriend—who was Raven—dumped him, and she and Clarke became unlikely yet fast friends. Then, Clarke had found out that her mother was seeing Marcus Kane, and had been since _before_ Clarke’s dad died.

Fall and winter had been a whirlwind, because that’s when Clarke met Lexa. Lexa was dark and cynical and whip-smart, with a talent for making Clarke feel impossibly special or hopelessly unworthy, depending on the day. Needless to say, it hadn’t lasted as long as either of them had hoped it would.

Now, Clarke feels like smiling. She stoops to pick the flowers, and breathes in deep the rich, green smell of new life. She thinks that maybe things will be better this year.  
  
She’s got a feeling.

.

Bellamy Blake is twenty-five—or, he guesses that’s about how old he is now.

Unlike most twenty-five year olds, though, Bellamy has never felt the warm spring air. He’s never gotten chapped lips from winter winds, nor has he felt the crunch of leaves under the soles of his sneakers.

Bellamy Blake is the Lord of the Underworld.

Well, sort of.

It’s complicated. He doesn’t actually reap any souls, or shepherd them to eternity, or whatever; he’s more of the latest in a long line of fall guys, doomed to a life underground.

What happened is this: Hades, God of the dead, brother of Zeus and all that junk, fell in love.  
Well, it was more like he got a crush on someone from afar, and, being—well, sort of socially inept, instead of just talking to her like a regular guy, he kidnapped her.

If you’re at all familiar with the story, you’ll know that the pretty girl he kidnapped is Persephone, daughter of Demeter, and pretty much like a blooming garden personified. Needless to say, she was not initially thrilled to find herself Hades’ unwilling captive.

But, like the roses that grow up from between the cracks of city pavement, love can spring up in the unlikeliest of places; Persephone fell in love with Hades, and with the strange night gardens of the underworld.

They had it worked out so that she stayed with him for six months out of the year, and then went back for spring and summer. Without her, there wouldn’t be changing seasons, which, you know—bad. Anyhow, it was alright for awhile. Several millennia, in fact.

Until—and here’s where it gets kind of fuzzy for Bellamy—they had some major falling out. Neither of them will say what happened, much less agree to be in each other’s presence even for a second, and thus, Hades’ curse was born.

Some poor guy was taken down below, and then some pretty girl was kidnapped, and the whole of the bigwigs on Olympus clearly turned a blind eye or several to the entire fiasco.

Bellamy is essentially that poor guy, only—and this is a first—he was actually born down here. He’s the only child of one of these unions. Aurora, their mother, was a beautiful Persephone, with dark hair and bronze skin. She, like the demigoddess she was to represent, ended up falling for her Hades. They had Bellamy, and it was good.

Then, when Bellamy was six, his mother didn’t come back after the summer ended aboveground. She always came back, every time. He can’t remember much about it, except that he cried when she didn’t come home.

His dad was upset, and he called Hades and asked him to find Aurora, to see if she was safe, but what he found was more painful than he could endure; Aurora had a lover aboveground, a man named Lucian. She lived with him when she went above, and this time, she was round with child. Lucian’s child.

The whole thing was a mess. Bellamy doesn’t like thinking about it, honestly, about what his father did to his mother, about what his mother did to him.

(Aurora had pled with Hades to allow her to keep the baby who would be Octavia. In exchange for this, Hades had made her sign away Bellamy’s life, to promise her only son as the next in line.)

Octavia was born, and Bellamy’s father dove into the Styx, let himself get dragged down with all the souls. Aurora wasn’t quite the same after—how could she be?—and Bellamy was left to pick up the pieces in his little, almost-seven-year-old hands.

When Bellamy was thirteen, his mother went aboveground one final time. She didn’t come back. Most of the time, he just thinks she’s dead; it’s easier than the alternative. It hurts too much to imagine that she went off and started a new life, away from her children. Bellamy hates his mom, just a little bit.

It’s bizarre to watch culture through the lens of media, but that’s how Bellamy and Octavia have learned about the world they’ll never see. They had educations down here, from private tutors with clammy skin and unpleasant smiles, but they looked at the television as though it were a window.

They have friends, but it’s not the same as the kind people have above; their friends are either dead, undead, or just not human. Bellamy’s best friend Nate Miller is the son of the Styx ferryman, who is technically a supernatural being, so Bellamy honestly has no idea if Miller is his age, or just looks it. He’s pretty sure ‘Nathan Miller’ can’t possibly be the guy’s real name.

Octavia spends a lot of time exploring the wastelands with Cerberus at her side, or cultivating the sprawling garden of weird underworld plants—things that curl and glow and bloom under the light of the red moon. Her best friend Anya is a low-level demon, fond of taking Octavia on harrowing adventures that make Bellamy’s whole body tense with anxiety, though he knows it’s nearly impossible for either of them to die.

There’s magic, obviously. Strong, old magic, old as time. It’s something he’s always known, and so he can’t imagine what it would be like to doubt in its existence, the way the people aboveground do.

Sometimes, Bellamy wonders what he’ll do when his Persephone comes. How will they ever be able to find common ground?

He’d ask the Fates, but they’re always touching his face with their gross clammy hands, and speaking in riddles just to be jerks.

He’s gone this long without knowing who she is or what she’s like; he supposes he can go a little while longer.

. .

It’s the first week before summer begins aboveground, and Bellamy is twenty-five (probably).  
This morning, he received a message in flowing script, the ink scented faintly of fresh melons and gardenias; it’s from Persephone.

_Dear Bellamy—_

_Her name is Clarke Griffin, she’s twenty-two, and she’s coming at summer’s end. Try to be nice._

_—P._

He reread it several times, blinking at the words and the parchment until his vision began to blur. Then, he methodically shredded it, and threw it into the fireplace.

Now, he’s throwing a tennis ball at the wall adjacent to the sofa he’s currently sprawled on, catching it when it bounces back only to throw it again.

Cerberus is snoozing in the corner, all three of his massive heads in the world’s weirdest puppy pile, and Octavia is being annoyingly enthusiastic.

“It’s just—aren’t you excited, Bell? Even you have to admit this is kind of exciting,” she says, apparently too energized to sit down.

Bellamy makes a face. “Why should I be? She’s gonna be some flowery little princess, and she’ll probably spend the first week crying in her room, and—”

“—oh my _god_ , you’re such a downer,” groans Octavia, flopping into the armchair dramatically. “It’s a new person, Bell. I might actually get a real friend, so you should at least be happy for me!”

Bellamy rolls his eyes and tries to scowl. It’s hard though, in the face of his baby sister’s joy. He has to admit to himself that he does like the idea of a real, breathing human friend for Octavia; he’s got nothing against demons and the undead—it’s just, he worries.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, reaching for the tv remote.

“Do you think she’ll be a big nerd like you?” Octavia asks, brightening again.

“Excuse you, I prefer ‘knowledgable.’”

“Yeah, because you’re a fucking nerd,” Octavia counters, rolling her eyes. “I bet she’s pretty,” she adds with a small sigh.

Bellamy is no stranger to pretty women. He’s had plenty of encounters with gorgeous women—and men—they just happen to be of the non-human variety. It turns out that demons and immortals aren’t super interested in being boyfriend-girlfriend or boyfriend-boyfriend or whatever with a mostly-mortal guy, so Bellamy has exactly zero experience with relationships.

He is currently trying to pretend that that fact does not stress him out.

“It’s kinda hard to imagine a human being prettier than the humanoids I bang down here,” Bellamy says with a smirk, partly just to hear his sister’s scoff of disgust.

“Gross, Bell.”

But he is sort of worried that he’s been spoiled—he’s worried that when his Persephone gets here, he won’t be able to appreciate her, because he’s been with girl-and boy-shaped beings with perfect, poreless skin and impossibly silky hair, with unattainably beautiful bodies.

He’s getting ahead of himself, he knows it; sometimes the Hades and Persephone tributes don’t fall in love, sometimes they just live as platonic partners for the whole of their time. Why is he even worrying about the romance, the sex? It probably won’t even happen.

“What if she hates me?” he asks softly, unable to stop the words escaping. “What if she thinks I did this to her?”

Octavia’s face falls, and she comes over to sit by Bellamy on the sofa, putting a thin arm around his shoulders.

“She’s not gonna hate you, big bro. She wouldn’t have been chosen for you if you guys couldn’t bond.”

He sighs, handing his sister the remote. He hopes she’s right.

. . .

It’s October 1st when Clarke next feels the field calling her with its siren song to ditch classes.

She’s tying back her hair in front of the bathroom mirror when Raven barges in.

“Sorry,” the other girl says, clearly not meaning it even a little. “I needed to grab my deodorant. Also, are you ditching class today?”

Clarke grins. “Maybe.”

“You’re such a rebel, Griffin.” Raven deadpans, then smacks Clarke on the arm. “Hey! We’re watching X-Files tonight, remember? I’m grabbing the beer on my way home from the shop, and you’re on pizza duty.”

“I won’t let you down,” Clarke mock-salutes. 

She has a silly little smile on her face as she runs, and realizes that it’s because she’s getting used to being happy. Fall is coming, which means there’s a slight crispness in the still-warm air, and pretty soon it will be another stupidly picturesque East Coast autumn.

Just as she’s coming up on the third mile of her trek, though, something doesn’t feel right.

She feels air rushing in her ears, and her vision is starting to tunnel. It’s terrifying.

In a rush, Clarke feels dizzy, like she’s losing her footing. It feels like the ground is falling out from beneath her. In the haze, struggling to keep her eyes open, she wonders if she is blacking out. She hadn’t eaten as much as she should have before her run, maybe—

—But she never makes it any further, because, well—she blacks out.

. .

“Bergamot, or musk?”

An enthusiastic female voice rouses Clarke from her unconscious state. She struggles for a few seconds, rubbing at her eyes, feeling like her limbs are made of lead. Blinking, she sits up, and realizes she’s half-lying on a very large, very over-the-top canopy bed. With black velvet curtains.

“What the hell?” Clarke rasps groggily, just noticing the grinning girl at the side of the bed.

She has long, shining dark hair, and the kind of striking, fresh face usually possessed by only the most genetically blessed of models. The girl is holding two bottles with ornate stoppers, beaming slightly manically down at Clarke.

“Bergamot,” she asks again, “or musk?” The girl smiles even more widely, her white teeth bright against the deep tan of her skin.

“Where—where am I? And who are you? What the fuck is this?” Clarke is sitting up straighter now, back braced by a plethora of black-silk pillows, taking in the flickering candlelight and the plate of glistening fruit on the table by the bed.

The girl sets down the bottles and sits down on the edge of the bed.

“I’m Octavia,” she says, as warmly as though she knows Clarke. Then, chewing her lip, she adds, “you’re here to be the new—well, maybe I’d better just let _him_ tell you.”

“Wait a minute,” Clarke says irritably, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her head _hurts_. Like a bad hangover. She can feel herself waking up quicker than if she’d chugged a double-espresso. She is also keenly aware that she is getting more and more frustrated with each passing second. “Who is he? And where, exactly, is _here_?”

The girl, Octavia, at least has the good grace to look vaguely guilty.

“Uh, would you believe it if I said the Underworld?”

Clarke opens her mouth, then shuts it again promptly. This continues for a minute or so, until she decides that she must be dreaming. She’ll probably wake up in the field, covered in bug bites, grass stains on the back of her t-shirt, and it will all be okay.

“The Underworld.” she echoes flatly, taking in the fairly normal clothing Octavia has on. “So, you’re like, one of Death’s handmaidens? How come you aren’t wearing Grecian robes or whatever?”

Octavia scoffs, arching one perfect eyebrow. “We’re not totally cut off from the mortal realm, you know. We have wi-fi.” She rolls her eyes before adding, “it’s totally spotty, though. Bell’s chambers have the best reception.”

“Is this some kind of sick joke? Am I being pranked?” Clarke can feel herself growing desperate.

The fruit on the nightstand is ripe and fragrant, and she is starving. A pomegranate has been halved, its ruby seeds glistening wetly in the candlelight; Clarke licks her lips unconsciously.

“I drew a bath for you,” Octavia says suddenly, brimming with that zinging energy again. “I only wanted to know if you wanted me to scent the water with bergamot oil or musk.”

Clarke sighs, willing herself to wake up. This has to be a dream.

“You know what? I think a bath would actually be pretty awesome.”

Octavia grins and leads Clarke through the marble archway into a bathroom that could house a family of four.

The tub is huge, and for the record, Clarke chooses the bergamot oil.

. .

“Okay,” says Octavia, appearing out of thin air, her skinny arms loaded with fluffy towels, “time to get you ready to meet the big guy.”

“Um,” says Clarke, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Relax,” Octavia says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I won’t look when you stand up if you don’t want. Here,” she hands Clarke a towel and turns around.

Clarke stands up gingerly, tucking the towel around herself, and steps out of the clawfoot tub onto the cool marble floor. Her hair is dripping, rivulets of water trickling over her shoulders and down to pool at her feet.

“Sorry about the floor,” she says automatically, always polite.

“It’s whatever,” replies Octavia. “Let’s pick you out an outfit, yeah? How do you feel about empire waist dresses?”

Clarke thinks for a moment. If her subconscious is really pulling out all the stops to make this dream so vivid, she might as well play along.

“I could live with that,” she says gamely, half in an effort to quash down the nerves starting to bite at her when she thinks about whoever this mysterious _he_ is that she’s about to meet.

“Great,” says Octavia. “I have the perfect thing.”

“Great,” Clarke echoes dryly, and follows her into yet another ridiculous chamber.

. . .

While Octavia wrestles Clarke’s hair into some complicated ‘relaxed’ style involving braids which belie just how complicated it really is, Clarke spaces out and thinks about her friends. She’d promised Raven that they would finish season three of the X-Files tonight—at least, she _thinks_ it’s night; it’s hard to tell here.

She thinks about how the ground had seemed to open up beneath her feet, like a huge, yawning chasm. She thinks about how dizzying it was to fall into the earth. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Clarke is less convinced that she’s dreaming all this up. Octavia’s nimble fingers are warm and pointy and real against her scalp, and the light fabric of the simple chiton-style dress Octavia had thrust at her feels cool and soft against her skin.

The fruit sits, still untouched, by the bed. The heady scent of it is filling the room, and Clarke is so hungry. Something inside her, some little voice, tells her not to eat it, though. So, she doesn’t. Even though she really, _really_ wants to.

“There!” exclaims Octavia proudly, beaming that megawatt smile again. It makes her look very young, and Clarke wonders for the first time since waking in this strange place just how old Octavia really is.

“I—thank you,” Clarke says finally, unsure how to feel.

In the enormous mirror, framed in elaborate scrolling iron, Clarke looks at herself. Face scrubbed clean, she looks a little pink—which isn’t unusual—but better rested than she has in months. Her hair is half up in a braided crown, the rest hanging loose and drying into wild curls over her shoulders. The chiton has a surprisingly high neckline, and though it’s pulled in at the waist, does a fair job of keeping Clarke’s boobs hidden. She likes that, at least.

“I was gonna give you some sandals, but, it’s not like any of us wear shoes in the house,” Octavia says, then adds quickly “unless, I mean, if you wanted some shoes…”

“No, no,” Clarke assures her. “I’m fine. No shoes.”

“Great!” Octavia smiles again. Clarke wonders if the girl’s cheeks ever hurt from smiling so much. “Are you ready?”

Clarke huffs in frustration, unable to hide her discomfort.

“I don’t even know what I’m about to walk into,” she says with a helpless shrug. “I don’t have any clue how to _be_ ready for this.”

And it’s true; Octavia has told her nothing at all about the person Clarke is about to meet. In fact, it almost seems like Octavia has been actively avoiding the subject altogether.

“Just—just be patient with him, okay?” she tells Clarke, her features softening. “He’s not—he’s not the best with new people. He’s really nervous about this.”

Clarke feels even less prepared than ever. She feels tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, because _what_ is even happening? But if there’s one thing Clarke Griffin is good at (besides cunnilingus and pencil sketching), it’s pushing her emotions down and dealing with what she has to.

“He’s really a wonderful person, Clarke,” Octavia says gently. “I promise.”

As they walk down the long and winding corridor, several flights of stairs, and finally one grand staircase made of—you guessed it—marble, Clarke doesn’t even think to wonder how it is Octavia knows her name.

.

“Sir,” Octavia drops into a flawless curtsy, “I present to you the tithe, Clarke Griffin. Shall I leave you to become better acquainted?”

At the head of the impossibly long black table, there’s—well, a boy. Okay, Clarke mentally amends. Not like a _boy_ -boy. But, certainly a younger man than she’d been expecting. Maybe early- to mid-twenties?

He’s glowering with ink-black eyes out from under a head of unruly dark curls, and for some reason Clarke feels this bizarre deja vu. He’s dressed in, from what Clarke can tell, a black cardigan over a grey button-up. He looks like a hipster.

“What is she, sixteen?” the guy says, frowning. “This whole thing is so monumentally fucked.”

And Clarke is offended, honestly. She didn’t even ask to be here, in this weird Queen of the Damned tribute of a palace, and she’s _twenty-two,_ thank you.

“I’m twenty-two,” she says testily, crossing her arms. “And I agree, this is fucked. Who are you? Are you supposed to be Death? Death is a grumpy hipster?”

The guy scowls at Clarke, and even though she’s beyond annoyed, she has to admit; it’s a pretty impressive scowl.

“Ooh, _twenty-two_. Pardon me,” the guy who may or may not be Death sneers. “You realize you’re here because you’re supposed to marry me, right?”

Clarke freezes, chest constricting painfully. She feels like she can’t breathe.

Somewhere to her left, Octavia groans, dropping all the ceremonial airs to glare at the guy who could be Death.

“Bellamy, what the hell?” she throws her arms up in disbelief. “I was gonna ease her into it! Or did you forget what happened with mom?”

Bell, Clarke remembers suddenly the name of the person whose chambers had the best wi-fi. Short for Bellamy, who is—apart from potentially being the Lord of the Dead—Octavia’s brother.

Now that she’s looking, though, Clarke can see the resemblance.

“Don’t you fucking bring mom into this, O,” Bellamy hisses, and Octavia looks ready to start throwing the glassware.

“Can somebody please explain to me what the shit is going on here?” Clarke half-shouts, and both siblings turn to stare at her.

She can feel herself flushing under their scrutiny, but she stays put, arms crossed and brow raised challengingly. It’s mostly a front, her bravery, but at least she has it.

Octavia pulls out a chair to the left of Bellamy, and motions for Clarke to sit down. Hesitantly, Clarke does, managing not to trip over the slightly-too-long hem of her dress.  
  
She stares down at the empty, shining plate in front of her, mostly just to avoid looking at the guy on her right. Octavia takes the seat across from Clarke, and snaps her fingers. The goblets in front of their plates all fill with dark wine.

“Okay, what,” Clarke starts, but Octavia cuts her off.

“—perks of the job, I suppose. I guess you’re probably wondering what all this is about.”

Clarke grits her teeth and nods. “Understatement of the century,” she grinds out.

“Are you familiar with Classical mythology, Clarke?” Octavia asks in a conversational tone, like they aren’t at a table that could seat fifty people, like she didn't just make wine materialize from nothing.

“I know enough, but I’ve always preferred Arthurian lore,” Clarke replies curtly, earning a rude snort from Bellamy. She glares at him. “What, you have something to say about Grail mythos? Let me guess: not dark enough for you, Lestat?”

“I just think it’s pretty typical that a blonde WASP like you is into Arthurian stuff, that’s all,” Bellamy smirks at Clarke, and it is infuriating. “Do you also think that Captain America is the best Avenger?”

“Don’t you talk shit to me about Steve Rogers,” Clarke snaps. “And I like King Arthur because it’s a king under the mountain legend. Like Charlemagne. Or Nanabijou. Or St. Wenceslas, or—”

“—okay, we get it, you’re both nerds,” interrupts Octavia huffily. “Now as I was _saying_ , Classical mythology. Particularly one story, which—sorry, Clarke—I would have thought was really obvious by now.”

And…it is really obvious, it’s just that Clarke is actively refusing to acknowledge that fact. She’s ignoring the Underworld and the black curtains and the decorative centerpiece made of dead flowers and human skulls.

“Maybe she’s just super oblivious,” Bellamy says, reaching for his wine. “I mean, she failed to notice the giant fucking chasm in the ground, because she fell into it.”

“Hey!” Clarke protests. “I fell into your stupid chasm because it opened up under my fucking _feet!_ ”

“Come on, Bell, you know that’s not how it works. If she would have noticed a big giant hole in the ground, she would never have just fallen into it.”

Bellamy says nothing, just grumbles under his breath about stupid curses and dumb blondes.

Clarke wonders how it’s possible that she’s not only fallen into some bizarro dimension, but also into direct contact with this utter asshole.

“So, this is actually the Underworld?” Clarke asks Octavia, her voice coming out more timid than she’d like it to be. “For real?”

Octavia smiles, but it’s tinged with sadness. It looks out of place on her.

“I’m afraid so,” she says. “Bell’s not the real Hades, don’t worry, he’s just like…a surrogate, I guess?” She looks to her brother, who nods.

“A couple hundred years ago, the real Hades and Persephone got in this huge fight, I mean, absolute knock-down, drag-out. The next spring after, she went above ground and never came back. I guess she lives somewhere in Northern California now.” Bellamy says, reaching for a roll from a basket that Clarke is certain had been empty two seconds ago.

“Right,” agrees Octavia, grabbing a roll and spreading some kind of soft cheese on it. “And supposedly, Hades was so pissed and heartbroken, he moped around and killed a lot of people who weren’t scheduled to die. The big guys upstairs noticed, and told him that there had to be some sort of tribute, or else the seasons would go all wonky.”

“So, every few hundred years or so—give or take—Hades picks some poor bastard, Persephone chooses a very unlucky girl, and they start the whole thing over again. Six months down here, six months up there. It’s very tedious.” Bellamy says around a bite of bread. “I guess the upside is that our lifespans are, uh, augmented. And I don’t have to do any actual reaping. Hades still manages all that.”

Now that he’s lost the contemptuous look, Clarke can appreciate Bellamy on an aesthetic level. Because, you know, she’s an artist.

He’s got freckles, which is surprising; she didn’t figure it was possible to get them without sun exposure. His jaw is sharp, and his chin has a dimple that shouldn’t be as attractive as it is. Okay, so he’s hot. Clarke’s ignored hotter guys before.

“So,” she says slowly, cold suddenly in her thin dress, though the air is fairly warm. “I’m the new Persephone?”

Octavia smiles sadly again, and Bellamy grunts the affirmative.

Clarke remains frozen for several seconds, before asking the one question that’s been gnawing at her since she realized what was going on. “Why? I mean, why me?”

Neither sibling offers an answer right away; Octavia chews her lower lip, and Bellamy frowns at his wine goblet as deeply as though it were Clarke.

“Well,” Octavia says with a small shrug, “Persephone chooses people who are—I don’t know, warm? Summery? People who have something…something she sees in them that reminds her of herself, I guess.”

 _Great,_ thinks Clarke, _just what I need._ To remind a demigod of herself, one whose claim to fame is being kidnapped and forced to marry the god of the Underworld.

She thinks, fleetingly, of her life. Her classes, her apartment, _Raven—_

“Shit, what do my friends think happened to me?” she blurts, starting to panic. “Is there any way I can contact them? I don’t want the people I care about to worry.”

“I don’t think—” Bellamy starts, but he’s cut off by Octavia.

“—you can use your phone in Bell’s room after dinner,” she says quickly. “It should get service in there. You can tell your family and friends whatever you want, but I’m pretty sure making something up about backpacking across Europe will be more convincing than the truth.”

Clarke relaxes, just a little. At least she’s going to be able to tell Raven she’s not dead. She can call Wells, too, maybe even her mom…

“Are you gonna eat anything, or are you on some special diet?” asks Bellamy with a sneer. He says the word ‘diet’ the way most decent people say ‘republican.’

The table is suddenly laden with food, Mediterranean, by the looks of it. Clarke knows that eating the food in fairytales is as good as a binding contract, but when faced with falafel and an entire plate of different kinds of goat cheese, she has to choose her stomach over her brain.

Instead of replying to Bellamy, Clarke gives him a sour look before piling food on her plate. Octavia is watching, clearly amused, and drinking what appears to be her third goblet of wine.

The food is incredible.

Clarke eats two platefuls, washing it down with two refills of the wine, which tastes strange and spicy and good. When she’s full to bursting, she leans back in her chair and sighs, suddenly sleepy and comfortable despite her predicament.

“So, no to the diet, then,” Bellamy remarks with a small smile, all casual and easy. It’s a sharp contrast to the glowering misanthrope of before, and Clarke wonders if there’s some way she can figure this guy out.

If she has to be with him for six months of the year for the rest of her life—and _whoa_ , that thought hits Clarke with the force of a speeding train—they might as well learn to get along, right? There’s no sense in being miserable half the year.

“Could I maybe call my friends now, please?” she asks, wondering where her phone even is. She assumes Octavia already put it in Bellamy’s chambers in preparation for the phone calls.

“Of course,” Bellamy nods to Octavia, who stands and motions for Clarke to follow her.

As the two of them wander down more twisting corridors, Octavia turns to grin at Clarke over her shoulder.

“So, you two really hit it off, huh?”

. .

“Wait, you’re _what?_ Did someone drug you? Did you drop acid of your own volition? Griffin, I swear to god, if you’re fucking with me…”

Against her better judgement, Clarke decided to tell Raven the truth about where she is. Raven Reyes, never one to do anything less than speak her mind, is speaking it quite colorfully.

“No, Raven,” Clarke assures her, eyeing a wall of bookshelves crammed with old, leather-bound volumes. “I’m not fucking with you. Apparently, the supernatural exists. I _wish_ it was just drugs.”

There’s a faint sound of static, then the crackle of Raven sighing.

“What should I tell your mom?” she asks after a few moments.

“Shit,” Clarke swears. “I didn’t even think about that. Can you tell her that I’m soul-searching in Europe with some guy named Francesco? Is that believable? Fuck, I’m so bad at lying.”

“You really are,” Raven agrees. “She’s gonna look at your account and see that there’s no money missing. Unless you can somehow access your funds from wherever the hell you are. Wait, _can_ you do that?”

“Huh.” Clarke thinks about it. “I dunno. I’ll ask Octavia. If I can, I’ll let you know. We probably have at least a week before she gets notified that I haven’t showed up for any of my midterms.”

And fuck, that stings. Even though she hates pre-med, and doesn’t even really want to be a doctor, Clarke hates the thought of failing her midterms by default. She’d crammed for a week to prep for those, and now she doesn’t even get to take them.

“Clarke?” Raven asks, sounding more unsure than Clarke’s ever heard her sound.

“Yeah?”

“You’re gonna come back, right?”

Clarke closes her eyes, and two fat tears manage to escape, slipping down her cheeks without warning. Wiping them away with the back of her free hand, she nods, though Raven can’t see it.

“Yeah,” she says wetly. “Yeah, Raven. I’ll be back. Just in time for spring.”

“Good,” Raven says, and Clarke thinks she might be crying a little, too. “Hey, send me a snapchat so I know you’re not tied up in some crazy asshole’s basement.”

Clarke laughs, and privately thinks that being here is not unlike being in some crazy asshole’s basement—if the basement was its own dimension. Then, they hang up, and she snaps Raven a picture of herself in front of the enormous, skull-bedecked fireplace in Bellamy’s chambers. She makes sure to get enough of her chiton in the picture, as well as the worryingly large dog bowl in the corner that reads CERBERUS in huge letters.

Raven sends back a snap of herself looking unimpressed, with the caption, _who is this guy, some Queen of the Damned reject?_ and it’s enough to make Clarke laugh instead of cry.

. .

“Well?” Octavia is looking at Bellamy expectantly, eyes shining.

He knows what she’s asking about, but still he plays dumb.

“Well, what?” he says, scratching his leg absentmindedly.

Octavia huffs in frustration.

“What did you think of her?” she prods, sitting down next to Bellamy on the couch.

“Of who?” he asks, utterly straight-faced.

“You’re such a piece of shit, I swear,” Octavia rolls her eyes and shoves at Bellamy. “Clarke, dummy. What do you think of Clarke?”

Bellamy isn’t sure how to answer that question without giving something about himself away.

She’s…she’s not what he expected, he’ll give her that. In some ways, she’s totally a Persephone, but there’s something different about her. Bellamy’s not ready to admit it, even to himself, but he thinks he might be kind of fucked. She seems more like an Artemis, bookish and testy. She’s gorgeous, and she knows about folkloric legends. She’s taking the whole Underworld-kidnapped-Greek myth thing amazingly in stride.

“She seems kind of bossy,” he says finally, and his sister grins wolfishly.

“You mean she didn’t seem like she’d take any shit from you? Yeah, I agree.” Octavia’s smile widens. “Oh, and, she asked to see the grounds tomorrow. I think she’s gonna be fun.”

Bellamy smiles too, seeing his sister so excited. He’s glad that Clarke isn’t planning to stay locked in her room until further notice—it’s happened before with some tributes, Bellamy knows. He likes the thought that his Persephone isn’t one to sit around feeling sorry for herself.

He flushes when he realizes he thought of Clarke as ‘his’ Persephone.

“Oh my god, you totally have a crush on her! Already! You’re so lame.” Octavia sings at him.

“Shut up,” Bellamy growls without heat. “I’m just trying to be nice to her, okay? This can’t be how she imagined her life going.”

Octavia smirks, stealing the remote and switching to the Lifetime movie channel.

“You should go make sure she’s settling in alright,” she tells him. “It’ll make up for the terrible first impression you made.”

Bellamy swears at her, but knows that he’ll do as she says anyhow.

. .

When she gets back to her room—and it’s weird to think about this gothic fantasy chamber with huge, vaulted ceilings and candlesticks in every corner as her room—Clarke finds a soft t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts folded neatly on the bed. She sheds the chiton hastily, kicking it to one corner, pulling the shirt over her head gratefully.

Just as she’s pulling the shorts up over her hips, there’s a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Clarke calls, wondering if there are more people in this enormous palace, and if so, why they would be knocking on her door just as she’s about to go to bed.

“Uh, it’s Bellamy,” comes the reply, and Clarke is too stunned to do anything other than tell him to come in.

He stands in the doorway, like he’s not sure about stepping foot over the threshold, and for the first time all night, Clarke sees how awkward he is.

“Did you—is everything okay?” he asks, fidgeting a little. “With your friends?”

Clarke shrugs one shoulder, offering him a half-smile.

“I told my best friend where I am—where I really am,” she says, and Bellamy’s eyebrows raise enough to be hidden by his hair. “She’s going to cover for me with my mom. It sucks that I won’t be able to finish school, though.”

Bellamy looks guilty, and Clarke has the urge to tell him it isn’t his fault.

“Jesus,” Bellamy says, shaking his head. “This is so stupid. I keep trying to tell Hades that he can’t just keep yanking people out of their lives just because he’s too petty to make up with his wife. I’m really sorry,” he adds, and he sounds it.

“Thanks,” Clarke says. “It’s not really your fault, I guess. It’s not like you asked to be here, either. I have a million more questions, and you’re definitely going to get annoyed with me, but I’m like, stupid tired, so I suppose they can wait until morning.”

“It’s kind of endless night down here,” Bellamy replies with a snort. He looks so different when he’s not actively being an ass. “The sun is like, weird and red. It’s like some Hot Topic holdover from 2003 designed this place.”

“Oh my god,” Clarke laughs, caught off-guard. “I totally thought you decorated this place at first, so I wasn’t going to say anything…”

“What, seriously?!” Bellamy looks affronted. “Shit, no. I can’t believe he designed this room for Persephone and thought she’d like it. I’m pretty sure 2003-era Marilyn Manson wouldn’t like this.” He cringes in the direction of the black canopy curtains.

Clarke laughs again, partly because, it’s funny, and also partly because Bellamy looks so thoroughly incensed at the idea that someone would think he had chosen the decor.

“All I keep thinking is, like, that heinous adaptation of Queen of the Damned from 2001. You should totally get some leather pants. And prosthetic fangs.” she says, giggling.

“Okay, I changed my mind, you’re back to sucking again,” Bellamy huffs.

“I wasn’t aware I’d stopped,” Clarke says with a grin that feels foreign after all that’s happened. “But for real, I need to go to bed. Please leave.”

That startles a real smile out of Bellamy, and it lights up his whole face. Clarke tries as hard as she can not to be dazzled by it, but, well. It’s pretty dazzling.

“It hasn’t even been a day, and you’re already acting like a princess.” he says, but he’s walking back through the open door.

“Yeah, yeah.” Clarke waves a lazy hand in his direction. “Takes one to know one.”

“Goodnight, Your Majesty.” Bellamy says before closing the door.

“Night, asshole.”

. . .

Bellamy goes back to his own chambers feeling confused, and yet not unhappy about it.

He hopes, against all his better instincts, that they can maybe form some kind of bond.  
  


(He sighs and buries his face in his pillow when he remembers how hot she is. He’d be lying if he said that didn’t factor in at all.)  
  
  
.


	2. over the sea to Skye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke adjusts to life in the Underworld. 
> 
> Bellamy adjusts to having met his match.

 

  
When she wakes up, Clarke experiences a blissful moment in which she assumes she is in her own bed, in her apartment on campus.

Reality comes and hits her like the crush of a wave, pressing down on her chest and making her panic for a few seconds. She closes her eyes for a few minutes, breathing deeply until her heart stops hammering in her chest and her throat stops feeling so tight.

She scrabbles for her phone, which is somehow still at 100% battery even though she hasn’t charged it in at least 24 hours, and checks for any notifications.

There are a bunch of snapchats, and a few texts from Raven. She notices that she’s got about three bars of service in here, which isn’t bad. She replies to Raven and sends a snap of her bed.

When she turns it to front-facing camera, she realizes with a groan that she never took her hair out of the elaborate braid crown that Octavia had done. It takes her ten minutes of swearing to figure out how to dismantle the whole thing, and when she’s done, it looks like she stuck her finger in an electrical socket.

She sends a selfie, making sure to include the candlestick nearest the bed, as well as the mountain of black pillows, and captions it _I woke up like dis._

Clarke wonders if she’s supposed to wait for Octavia to come fetch her, or if she’s got free reign of the palace. The halls are confusing, so half of Clarke would rather just wait. On the other hand, though, she’s hungry again, and she wants to explore the place that’s going to be her prison for the next six months.

In the wardrobe at the farthest corner of the room, Clarke finds that each of the drawers is jam-packed with clothes in exactly her size. She’d be creeped out—and, okay, she is a little—but she remembers that there’s magic here. Nobody was measuring her while she was passed out, probably.

It’s not hard to find her bathroom, which is stocked with toiletries. Clarke brushes her teeth and splashes her face with cold water from the tap. When she’s rooting around for a hair tie, it hits her that there is actual modern plumbing. She wonders when they implemented that.

Hair in a bun, Clarke throws on a fresh pair of underwear and a plain bra that feels more expensive than any of her own, and then shimmies into a loose-fitting t-shirt dress.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she mutters to herself, before opening the door and stepping out into the hall.

.

It’s weird, for sure.

There are some weird potted plants along the walls and tucked into corners, and a few stark paintings framed and hanging between the wall sconces.

A few times, Clarke gets turned around and very nearly panics, but she manages to calm down and try to remember which way Octavia had taken her to get down to what she assumes is the ground floor.

She’s just turning a corner when all of a sudden, Clarke hears the frantic clack of nails on the slippery floor that can only come from an excited dog. She loves dogs (and cats, and bunnies, and every animal that exists) but she nearly chokes when she recalls the huge dog bowl by the fireplace.

She barely has time to make a strangled gasp that vaguely resembles the word ‘no’ when she is knocked off her feet by a giant, three-headed dog.

Clarke shrieks, but they turn from shrieks of terror into ones of joy within seconds when she realizes that each of the three heads are jockeying for prime position to slobber all over her face.

Let the record show that Clarke Griffin loves puppy kisses, even from mythological three-headed monster dogs.

She sits on the floor with the dog—dogs?—obliging when he—they?—roll over and expose their belly for rubbing. That’s how Bellamy and Octavia find her, baby-talking Cerberus and trying to figure out a way to scratch all three heads’ ears at once with just two hands.

“You…you’re not scared of him?” Bellamy asks, his expression unreadable.

Clarke grins up at him. “I sort of assumed he was here somewhere, on account of the bowl with his name on it by the fireplace. What can I say?” she shrugs. “I really love dogs.”

Octavia gives Bellamy a smug look before flouncing away down the hall.

. . .

“How long have you lived here?” Clarke asks Octavia as the two of them trudge through the strange not-quite-wastelands that surround the sprawling palace.

“I was born here,” Octavia replies, stopping to retie the lace of her hiking boot that’s come undone; snagged on a cluster of thorny brambles. “So was Bellamy. Our mom was a Persephone.”

Clarke mulls this information over as they traipse across the cracked earth, littered with the bones of creatures Clarke can’t identify. The landscape is dotted with strange, skeletal trees and craggy steppes. The sky is as dark as if it were night, and, as promised, the sun is bizarrely crimson.

“Was your dad a Hades, then?” Clarke asks, trying to draw lines in her head to make up some sort of Blake family tree.

Octavia stops just a few yards short of a cliff edge—several steps further, and they’d be looking over a vast gorge. A canyon. It’s like the Grand Canyon, but weird and dark. Instead of oranges and yellows and burnt sandy hues, this canyon is grayish blues and purples and eerie green.

“Bell’s dad was, yeah,” Octavia says, pulling her sleek mane of hair free from its ponytail just so she can put it back up. “My dad was an abovegrounder. Our mom left us to be with him.”

Clarke is momentarily too stunned to reply. She takes in the canyon in all its incomprehensible largeness instead.

“That’s,” she begins after a moment, and then falters. “Wow.”

Octavia shrugs, smiling a weird little sad smile.

“It is what it is,” she says. “Bell pretty much raised me on his own. He was just a kid, so they gave us nannies and stuff, but…yeah.”

“So, you’re stuck down here with your brother, even though you aren’t a tribute?” Clarke asks, mildly horrified but hoping her face doesn’t show it.

“Well,” Octavia’s eyes skitter away, and she looks suddenly guilty “not exactly. When I turned eighteen, I got permission from the big guy to go above if I wanted. If I leave…”

“…You can’t come back. No, I get it. That’s a pretty big thing to have to sacrifice just to live in the world. I don’t blame you.” Clarke tells her sincerely.

If she had a sibling, she’d do the same. If her dad were still there…

Octavia looks grateful, then she punches Clarke on the arm and grins.

“Okay, enough of the tragic backstory,” she says with a wave of her hand. “Let’s go see what’s for lunch.”

Clarke steals one last look at the breathtaking canyon, and even snaps a few pictures on her phone to send to Raven when she’s back in range of the wifi, before falling in step with Octavia.

Her stomach complains loudly, and she realizes that she is kind of looking forward to another awesome meal.

. .

“How were the wastelands?” Bellamy asks by way of greeting when Clarke and Octavia clamber into the huge main hall. “Still depressing and eternally night?”

Octavia elbows him in the ribs, hard, as she walks by.

“Shut up, loser,” she says mildly “just because _you_ prefer to live your life indoors…”

“How about you?” he turns to Clarke, a smirk playing on his lips. “Did you marvel at the beauty of your new winter home?”

And Clarke’s not sure why, she knows he’s just teasing, but something about his words make her chest feel tight and her throat suddenly ache.

“I’m sorry,” she manages to choke out, already fleeing to the stairs. “I have to—”

She makes it through three corridors before bursting into tears, slumping down into a corner next to a potted palm and pulling her knees up to her chest.

The sobs hurt, shaking her whole body, and the fabric of her jeans is soaked with her tears.

She’s here, like it or not, for the next six months. She’ll be here on and off for the rest of her life.

Bellamy and Octavia aren’t bad—they’re kind of, Clarke realizes, the best case scenario she could have hoped for, in a situation like this—but its all too much for Clarke. She misses her bed, and her friends, and her classes. She misses the sun. It’s only been a few days, and she’s already homesick.

“I know the wastelands are pretty shitty, but I didn’t think they were that emotionally scarring,”

Clarke looks up to see Bellamy standing in front of her, wearing a soft, concerned expression. It’s one that he hasn’t worn with her yet, and for that reason, it strikes her. He sits down beside her, close enough that she could touch him if she wanted, but far enough away so that she doesn’t feel crowded by him.

The tenderness in his face and his attempt at lightheartedness just makes her cry harder. She kind of wishes he’d go back to being a dick.

“That was supposed to make you laugh, Princess.” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “But seriously, if there’s anything I can do, just name it.”

Clarke wipes her eyes on her sleeve and turns to look at him, something like wonder blooming in her chest.

“You really mean that, don’t you?” she asks incredulously.

Bellamy makes a face, then looks away; shrugs.

“I’m not here to make you miserable,” he says finally, looking uncomfortable or embarrassed. “I’m supposed to make it bearable. Or whatever.”

Clarke isn’t sure what to make of that. She wants to ask Bellamy why he’s being so nice to her.

Instead, she bumps his shoulder with hers and gives him a tentative smile.

“Eating would help, probably,” she says, raising her eyebrows hopefully.

Bellamy snorts softly, his small smile turning amused.

“C’mon,” he grunts, getting to his feet. “I think that’s a problem we can solve pretty easily, at least.”

 

. . .

After dinner, Bellamy and Octavia show Clarke the den, and the three of them settle in to watch something on Netflix.

Naturally, they argue about what to watch.

Octavia wants to find a comedy, something dumb to make fun of, while Bellamy and Clarke surprisingly agree on documentary for the genre.

“Fucking nerds,” Octavia hisses, handing over the controller when she realizes she’s been outvoted.

“We can watch a comedy next time. One with like, Zac Efron and copious amounts of current slang,” Clarke promises, and Bellamy feels his heart swell a little in his chest.

He likes seeing the easy camaraderie that’s begun to blossom already between his sister and Clarke. Even though he senses the impending doom of being ganged up on by two women, he can’t bring himself to mind. Octavia deserves a friend.

“Okay,” Octavia agrees, grinning. “No take-backs, though. Tomorrow night, it’s my pick.”

They settle back into the sofa cushions, Octavia in the middle and Bellamy and Clarke on either side, and select an interesting-looking documentary about some old serial killer.   
Cerberus comes padding in, overjoyed to see everyone in the same place. He settles down at Clarke’s feet, the three heads immediately lowering sleepily.

Throughout the movie, Bellamy sneaks glances at the girl on the other side of the sofa. She absentmindedly reaches down to rub Cerberus’ belly, her eyes never leaving the tv screen, and Bellamy groans inwardly at just how fucked he is.

When the documentary ends, Octavia puts the cable back on, and they banter over a marathon of some shitty reality show.

“Hey, do you have Skype on your laptop?” Clarke asks, looking up from her phone.

Octavia shrugs.

“Yeah, even though it’s pointless,” she says, rolling her eyes. “We don’t even know anyone to Skype with.” She slides off the sofa, her lean, lithe frame making her look younger than ever as she sits on the floor with her knees up, scratching Cerberus behind the ears.

“Well, I’ll Skype you when I’m aboveground,” Clarke says with a _duh_ -expression, and seriously, Bellamy wonders how long he can go without falling for her when he sees the way his sister’s expression immediately brightens.

She beams at Clarke before springing to her feet to go get the laptop.

“My friend Raven,” Clarke explains to Bellamy while Octavia is gone. “She asked if I could video-chat with her, let her know I’m really fine.”

Bellamy nods, ready to push himself up off the couch cushions.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he says, but is startled by the little hand that darts out to grab his wrist.

“No!” Clarke says in a rush, then turns a little pink and quickly releases her crushing grip on his arm. “I mean, um, I kind of want her to meet you? And Octavia too, if you guys don’t mind?”

Bellamy is so stunned by this, all he can do is nod dumbly, and try not to be too pleased that Clarke wants him to meet her best friend.

“Got it!” Octavia sings, bouncing back into the room, MacBook in hand. “Should we give you some privacy?”

Clarke offers the younger girl a small smile.

“I thought maybe you guys would wanna meet Raven,” she explains, suddenly seeming shy.

Octavia squeals delightedly, squashing herself right next to Clarke on the couch.

“Here, Bellamy,” Clarke says. “I’ll sit in the middle.”

And she and Octavia scoot over, making room on Clarke’s left for Bellamy.

“Are you guys ready?” She asks, pulling up the program and typing in her username and password.

In only a few seconds, there’s an incoming call from Raven Reyes.

Clarke clicks accept, and the video screen boots up to reveal a gorgeous girl with big, dark eyes and smudges of what looks like motor oil on her cheek.

“Fucking hell, Griffin!” The girl, presumably Raven, swears.

Clarke grins and shrugs, clearly excited to see her friend. Her whole body seems to have relaxed, and where her shoulder is pressed up against Bellamy’s, he feels the tension leave her.

“See?” she jokes. “Still alive,.”

“And not a collar or chain in sight,” Raven remarks, “I’m very relieved. So, who are your friends?”

“This is Octavia, she’s awesome.” Clarke bumps O’s shoulder.

Bellamy has to bite back a smile as his sister gives a silly little wave to the webcam.

“Lovely to meet you.” Raven favors his sister with a stunning smile before turning to lock eyes with Bellamy through the monitor. “And you must be the weirdo.”

He knows that there are dimensions separating them, all kinds of barriers and forcefields that don’t follow any mortal logic or physics, but still…he can’t help being a little bit afraid of her.

“Bellamy’s more of a nerd than a weirdo.” Clarke grins, and Bellamy tries not to be pleased. “Seriously, he jumped down my throat for liking _Troy_ despite its flagrant historical inaccuracies.”

Bellamy ducks his head. He can’t help it—historical inaccuracies in film make him rage.

“Oh, wow.” Raven blinks, raising both eyebrows. “Have you finally met your nerd match, Griffin?”

Bellamy notices that Clarke goes a little pink again, but the conversation goes pretty smoothly after that. The four of them chat, and it’s actually—it’s _nice_ , being part of a social group. O is loving it, getting to use all her witty comments on people other than Bellamy.

When they say goodbye, Raven tells Bellamy that he’s unfairly hot for a creepy basement-dwelling nerd, then signs off before he can protest that his ‘basement’ is at least a subterranean palace in an alternate dimension.

Clarke is beet red next to him, but she looks happy.

Bellamy’s heart squeezes in his chest, because if he can help it, he’ll make sure that being stuck down here with him is as far away from punishment as possible.

. . .

“I met your little mortal girl,” Echo drawls, her voice always as sleek and seductive as the rest of her. “She’s cute. Can I have a turn?”

Bellamy gives her a sour look.

“Lay off, yeah? She’s not so bad.”

“Ooh, am I sensing something, Blake? Do I smell the faint aroma of budding romance?” Echo grins, showing off her rows of pointed teeth. She pokes her forked tongue through a little, just for good measure.

Bellamy would rather not think about that tongue; he had to wean himself off of Echo over a year ago. She’s a succubus, and it was sapping his energy being with her, even though she said she couldn’t help it. In the end, it just wasn’t physically healthy.

They’re still friends, though sometimes her overt sexuality can add a layer of heaviness. He was surprised that Clarke took meeting Echo in such stride.

She’s teasing him, baiting him as usual, but Bellamy’s not in the mood. He’s trying to think of ways to show Clarke that she’s safe here, that she’s as free as is possible given the curse and its parameters.

“Did you want something, or did you just come to wind me up?” he knows he’s being kind of a dick, but there’s a weird storm brewing in the wastelands, and storms always give Bellamy pressure headaches.

“ _Yeesh_ , who spit in your ambrosia?” Echo rolls her eyes. “I just wanted to see how you were. It’s gotta be weird, adjusting to life with a new person.”  
Immediately, Bellamy feels like a jerk. Echo, despite the assumptions one might make about her based on more superficial things, is a good friend when it comes down to it. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Sorry. I’m an asshole. You’re right, it’s been kind of stressful, thinking about whether or not she’s okay, how she’s adjusting to everything. I’m—it’s weird, yeah.”

Echo sits down in the lounge chair adjacent to Bellamy’s, stretching her long legs and making her scales gleam under the dim light of the red sun.

“She seems to be taking it pretty well, all things considered. So is her best friend, actually. This girl named Raven, she’s probably even scarier than you.” he teases, grinning at his friend. “They Skype a lot. It’s kind of surreal, talking to someone in the mortal realm.”

This seems to give Echo pause for a moment. When she speaks again, it’s measured.

“You’ve…you’ve met her friend? She wasn’t—she was willing to share that?” she asks, sounding strangely childlike. ‘Innocent’ is not a tone of voice Bellamy ever believed existed in Echo’s repertoire.

“Uh, yeah. Is that weird? I kind of told her it would be weird, but she insisted it wasn’t, so…” he trails off.

Echo is looking down at her lap.

“Wow.” she says, examining her glossy, talon-like nails. “I guess I didn’t think it would go like this.”

Bellamy feels strangely aware of something happening right now, but he’s not sure exactly what it is, and he’d rather not guess and be wrong. Instead, he tries to see where his ex-whatever-they-were is coming from and—

“Are you jealous?” he splutters, too incredulous for tact.

“ _No_.” Echo hisses, eyes glowing red-orange as she glares daggers at him. “Yeah, ok, maybe a little,” she relents. “So what?”

Bellamy shrugs.

“I guess I didn’t figure you were the type,” he says plainly.

“I didn’t either,” the demon agrees, looking surprised at her own candor. “I think I just got so used to you, y’know? You were my little human consort down here, my human away from humans, as it were.”

“That’s…sweet, I guess, in a super weird way.” Bellamy tells her, lying back in his chair again. “I’m glad you told me, though.”  
“Yeah, whatever,” she replies, settling into her own lounger for an afternoon nap. “But it’s okay to admit you’re into her. I’m not blind.”

Bellamy’s face feels hot. “I’m not into her,” he lies. “I just don’t want her to feel like a prisoner here.”

Echo snorts. “She _is_ a prisoner here.”

“Yeah, but she’s not _my_ prisoner. It’s a very important distinction.”

“God, you get so uppity when you’re accused of something true.”

“Shut up and take your nap,” Bellamy says without any real heat.

They both fall asleep in their chairs, and when Bellamy wakes up, he finds that he’s alone.

Wandering back inside and rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he’s met with the strange yet welcome sight of O, Clarke, and Echo engaged in a very loud game of MarioKart.

He sighs and resigns himself to the fact that Clarke is going to win over every single person she meets down here, whether he likes it or not.

. . .

“God, I wish you could meet my other friends,” Clarke whines to Octavia, leafing through the younger girl’s huge book of detailed drawings. The immense volume is packed with the various flora and fauna (and personae) of the Underworld. There’s even a section devoted to the gods and goddesses and demigods O has met. “Lincoln would go nuts over this.”

“Who’s Lincoln?” Octavia asks around a mouthful of pita chips.

“He’s—here, hang on. I’ll show you a picture,” Clarke goes and grabs her phone from the coffee table and scrolls through her photo library til she finds her friend Lincoln. “Ta-da!”

Octavia makes a strange sound, swallowing a half-chewed lump of chips that can’t feel good at all, and grabs the phone out of Clarke’s hands.

“Hey, ow!” Clarke protests.

There are several moments of O scrolling through Clarke’s library, obviously scanning all the pictures for more Lincoln. When she’s done, her head snaps up like it’s about to do Exorcist spins.

“Tell me everything about him,” Octavia demands, eyes wide and sharp. She looks positively crazy, and Clarke makes zero attempts at phone retrieval. “Everything.”

“Um, he’s twenty-seven, he’s in my life drawing class…he’s super nice, like, definition of gentle giant. Doesn’t really talk much, but when he does it’s something profound or hilarious. Kind of like Miller,” Clarke realizes, thinking on the similarities the two guys share. “Only huge, and more of an optimist.”

“How can he look like that?!” Octavia clutches at her hair, shaking her head in disbelief. “I thought only Adonis looked like that!”

“Yeah,” hums Clarke in somber agreement. “That’s usually most peoples’ reaction when they first see Lincoln.”

For the rest of the afternoon, she has to think up reasons other than ‘your brother would totally kill me for introducing you to a mortal dude’ as to why she can’t introduce Octavia to Lincoln via Skype.

(She has to eventually fake a migraine to escape back to her chambers, as her excuses were getting ridiculously flimsy. She makes a mental note to just mention it to Bellamy as casually as possible three days from _never_.)

. .

Time passes strangely in the Underworld.

There’s no real sense of night and day, and the only changes in weather come with the sandstorms and weird rain-dust storms that blow through the wastes every so often. The moon hangs in the weird sky right next to the sun, eclipses it once a night for a full hour of total darkness (it is super scary, and Clarke learned her lesson after going outside one time during the moon hour) before moving back down until it disappears again, signaling that morning has arrived.

There’s a sea, too, though it’s not extremely close to the palace. Like everything else down here, it’s weird, and you probably shouldn’t swim in it. There are big things down there, like, leviathan-big. Older than old.

“Hades made a lot of those creatures when he was in a bad place,” Bellamy explained when they brought their boat back to shore after an hour or two on the water.

“When _wasn’t_ he in a bad place?” Clarke had grumbled bitterly, picking tiny fish bones out of her hair after an encounter with one such beast.

(It had been enormous, and it had spewed gross sea monster barf all over them in the few seconds before Bellamy had managed the magic words to call it off.)

Bellamy decided to just shut his mouth on the topic, because Clarke had seemed pretty annoyed, and because no one wants to hear apologist rhetoric when they’re covered in stinky supernatural vomit.   
They’ve stepped from tentative new figures in each others’ lives into more comfortable territory, and though neither one will say so, it’s a relief. Clarke is starting to really make herself at home in the palace, and Bellamy has more or less stopped looking all constipated when she says something he doesn’t agree with.

(Octavia thinks privately that maybe it was better before all the flirting in the guise of debate.)

. . .

Bellamy goes out onto the terrace one morning to find Clarke with an easel, frowning at a large canvas, paint smudged on her arms and face and shirt.

Cerberus is lounging on the ground nearby, each head waking every so often to make gooey puppy heart eyes up at Clarke.

(Seriously, Bellamy is endlessly amused by how quickly that three-headed mutt took to Clarke. He’s pretty much positive the dog likes her more than he likes anyone at this point.)

“I didn’t know you painted,” he says lamely, wincing when she startles enough to drop her palette. “Here, sorry”—

He uses a little magic to pick it up for her, smoothing the splattered paint back into neat dabs on the palette’s surface once more. She takes hold of it again and exhales loudly out her nose.

“You scared the shit out of me,” she laughs breathlessly, turning to look at him. “Yeah, painting is a hobby, I guess. O made me this easel and some canvasses and paints and stuff. I swear, I’ll never get used to things just appearing from thin air.”

“It must be so novel for you, you poor baseline human,” Bellamy agrees seriously. “Meanwhile, I’d probably be like a kid at Disneyland in a real store in your realm.”

Clarke looks unimpressed. “How would you know what a kid at Disneyland is like?” she asks with an amused snort.

“I’ve read books,” he says, a little defensively, maybe. “We have cable.”

“Disneyland was disappointing as a kid. Too stressful.” Clarke reaches up to push a stray curl behind her ear, smudging her temple with grass-green in the process. “It’s way more fun as an adult. You can get drunk, and you get way more excited about all the characters. Nostalgia, I guess.”

There’s a beat, and Bellamy shifts his weight from foot to foot, feeling a little awkward.

“What are you painting?” he asks, immediately berating himself inwardly for such lameness.

Mercifully, Clarke doesn’t comment on his renewed status as a Weenie Hut Jr., and turns to face her canvas again.

“It’s just this field near my school where I like to run, hang out when it’s warm. It’s actually,” she says with another ironic snort, “the spot where I fell into your stupid Underworld chasm.”

Bellamy looks at the landscape depicted on the canvas, marveling at her use of color, or maybe just at the colors themselves as applied to nature. He knows, from reading and television, that these are the colors aboveground, but it’s still so crazy to think about.

“Grass is actually green,” he muses. “And the sky is really blue like that?”

Clarke turns to shoot him a soft, bemused look over her shoulder.

“Some days, yeah.” she nods. “It changes every day, though. Every sunrise can be different, every sunset. Depends on where you are, what the weather is like, pollution, all that jazz. I wake up early, so I like sunrises.”

“Figures you’d be one of those annoying assholes who wakes up with the sun, Princess,” Bellamy smirks. “Do your friends make fun of you about it?”

She laughs for real, not just the quiet huff she sometimes does. It sounds like a million things Bellamy’s never experienced, but _wants_ to.

“Oh, yeah. Believe me, it’s one of the many things they give me shit for. I wish…” she stops, the smile fading from her face, her blue eyes clouding over. “Never mind.”

Bellamy thinks he knows what’s wrong, but he asks anyway. If there’s one thing he’s learned from having a little sister, it’s that you can’t ever assume anything, and you can’t wait for people to tell you shit of their own volition. “What is it?”

Clarke sighs, setting her brushes down in a glass jar full of water that’s been magicked to stay clean.

“I just keep thinking about how I wish you guys could meet all my friends, not just Raven. And not just on Skype,” she glances at him out of the corner of her eye, like she’s checking his expression for information on how to proceed. “I know they would love you guys. I know it’s dumb to even think about something that can’t happen, I just.” she shrugs. “Yeah.”

Bellamy is hit with a wave of emotion he isn’t expecting. It’s weird enough, how easily Clarke Griffin has fit herself into his and O’s lives; it’s weirder still that she wants to give them the chance to return the favor. He wonders if this is what it’s like being around regular humans all the time.

“I’ll have you know, I’m fighting every instinct within myself right now _not_ to say something cynical and defeatist like I normally would,” he tells her, heart squeezing when it gets the soft laugh he was hoping for.

“Yeah, I bet,” she says with another snort. “I appreciate that.” she sighs again, and Bellamy is overcome by the urge to do something totally lame and stupid, like hug her.

“For what it’s worth, I wish it was different, too.” he says finally, and the look she gives him tells Bellamy that he actually maybe said the right thing for once.

. . .

Bellamy is in the living room with an old copy of _Crime & Punishment_ when Clarke strolls in with a look on her face of feigned innocence that is way too endearing.

“So, I saw that you have a pool,” Clarke says in a tone that seems almost too nonchalant.

Bellamy looks up from his book, taking in the warm pink of her cheeks, and trying to ignore the tiny athletic shorts she’s wearing.

“Congratulations,” he tells her, going back to his novel. “Your eyes work.”

He tries not to smirk too obviously at the page he’s currently not-reading when she makes an indignant sound.

“So, is it cool to swim in it, or is there like, some kind of tentacle beast in there?”

“‘Tentacle beast’?” Bellamy snorts. “No, it’s just a pool. And as for swimming, knock yourself out.”

He wants to add, because this house isn’t just mine and O’s anymore, but he doesn’t.

He feels Clarke thinking, don’t ask him how. Freaky curse bond shit, probably. She pauses for a few seconds, then sighs.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to join me?” she asks, her tone of voice belying just how likely she thinks it is that he’ll accept. “What am I saying, you probably hate swimming. I’m gonna go find Octavia.”

Bellamy grins, puts a marker in his book and sets it aside.

“Hey, Clarke?” he calls to her retreating form. She turns around and folds her arms over her chest.

She looks unimpressed.

“If you wanted to see me shirtless,” he smirks, running a hand through his hair, “all you had to do was ask.”

“Ugh. As if,” Clarke spits, but her cheeks are burning. “I’m gonna go find Octavia, and a swimsuit. I’ll try not to trip over your ego on my way out.”

It’s a good thing Clarke can’t see how obviously he checks out her ass as she walks away.

. .

The bathing suit she found in her wardrobe is actually really cute.

(She’s not honestly sure why she’s surprised at this point—all the clothes Octavia magics up for her are awesome.)

It’s got proper cups and underwire in the top, the bottom isn’t overly teeny-tiny, and the print is cute little pineapples on a background of bright blue. It’s totally something she would wear, and it fits her like a glove.

“You look _hot_ ,” Octavia beams and claps her hands when she sees Clarke by the doors leading out to the pool. “I knew that color would be good on you.”

“Thanks,” Clarke returns the smile. “You always look hot, so I’m not going to bother doling out wardrobe-conditional compliments.”

Octavia’s smile turns into a grin. “You’re my favorite,” she says, then grabs Clarke’s hand. “Come on, let’s get in. I got cool raft thingies for us.”

The doors open on their own, and the two girls walk barefooted out onto the oddly-warm stone. Floating in the pool, Clarke sees three rafts: one shaped like a giant slice of pizza, one inner-tube that looks like a donut, and one iridescent clamshell with a pearl-pillow.

“I saw something like them on Tumblr,” Octavia says a little sheepishly.

“They’re awesome,” Clarke tells her. “Which one do you want?”

“I think I’m a donut girl,” O says.

“Nice,” Clarke nods. “I think I need to take a gross number of selfies on that pizza raft.”

“Agreed. That leaves the millennial mermaid shell for his highness,” Octavia says with a snort.

They’re lounging around on their pool floats when Bellamy finally appears, wearing a pair of swim trunks so faded that it takes Clarke a moment to realize they were once neon green. He’s unfairly hot, all lean muscle and brown skin gleaming. He catches her staring and winks.

Clarke turns over on her raft, cheeks burning.

“So, I’m the Little Mer-Bell today, I guess,” he says gamely, easing himself into the water with his hands braced on the tiled edge. “God, you’re pale.” he says, cocking one infuriating brow at Clarke and smirking.

“I was doing a lot of volunteer work at the hospital this summer,” she says, indignant despite herself. “I still don’t understand how you guys are even tan down here, it defies logic.”

“And the creational magic, alternate dimensional realm, and clearly supernatural creatures don’t defy logic?”

“Stop flirting and play with me,” whines Octavia, whipping a neon pink volleyball at them.

Things devolve quickly into a melee of dodgeball-esque pool violence, and then it becomes about trying to pile on the clamshell and push the others off. They’re all laughing, choking on pool water and splashing each other—it’s the most fun Clarke has had in awhile with someone other than Raven. Her cheeks hurt from smiling.

“What am I looking at right now,” says someone in a voice that’s only a little more emphatic than true monotone. It’s Bellamy’s friend Miller, who Clarke met during her first week down here. She likes Miller, even though he can be hard to read at first.

(Maybe Clarke’s just got experience with people like that; Raven isn’t exactly the world’s most open book when you first meet her.)

“Hey, Miller,” she calls, grinning joyously. “Wanna help me and O defeat Bell once and for all?”

He looks blankly at her for a few seconds longer than are really necessary, before taking off his beanie and magicking himself into a pair of trunks.

“Any excuse to kick Blake’s ass,” he clarifies, then does a double backflip into the water without warning.

Things only get more ridiculous from there, and by the time they all agree to call it a day and head inside for something cold to drink, Clarke realizes for the first time that she hasn’t thought about home for more than five hours in a row.

She looks across the marble-topped kitchen island at Bellamy, whose brows are furrowed as he heatedly argues with Miller about the importance of context when considering Russian literature, and she thinks that she might be in actual trouble.

.

  
“This is stupid,” Bellamy says for the millionth time since they all sat down in the den to watch something after dinner. “Who wants to watch a show about—about whatever the hell this show is even about?”

“Can you just shut up for like, five seconds? I’ve been wanting to watch this forever, and now I finally have a swing vote.” Octavia smiles sweetly and blows a kiss to Clarke.

The ‘this’ they are currently about to watch is _Outlander_ , starting from the very beginning. The show is, apparently, about a WWII field nurse who gets magicked away through some standing stones while on her belated honeymoon in Scotland, and somehow ends up in the 1700s right around the time of the Jacobite uprising.

And _no_ , Clarke is _not_ thinking about how that brief summary reminds her of her own strange, supernatural predicament. She supposes, though, being sent back a few hundred years into the past would probably be a lot worse than where she’s ended up.

They queue up the first episode, and Octavia clutches at Clarke’s arm when it starts, while Bellamy crosses his arms over his chest and looks bored and annoyed.

Claire is a _babe_ , Clarke thinks.

By the time she’s fallen through time at the standing stones, both girls are on the edge of their seats. Bellamy still has his arms crossed over his chest, reluctant to relax his posture and have it be interpreted as enjoyment of the show.

But he gasps too, when Claire comes face to face with Black Jack Randall, and he makes an appreciative noise the first time the audience is shown Jamie; by the time they’re queuing up episode 2, he’s leaning forward with wide eyes.

“Not what you thought it was gonna be, huh?” Clarke can’t help nudging him with her elbow, smiling slyly.

“It’s so…” Bellamy says, sounding a little breathless.

“So?”

“So historically accurate,” he finishes, clearly awed.

Octavia laughs so hard she snorts, and Clarke joins in because it’s easier to do than to admit how much it pleases her that Bellamy Blake cares about historical accuracies.

.

They’re singing the theme song out loud together by the third night, the girls clutching at each other and Bellamy whenever something dramatic or romantic happens.

Bellamy wishes he hadn’t gotten sucked in, but here he is, swooning over Jamie and Claire and pretending it doesn’t make his heart stutter in his chest every time Clarke touches him.

When they’ve watched all of season one—and _damn_ , Bellamy will never question time-travel romances again—they spend an hour discussing everything, replaying key moments, and debating when to start on season 2.

“Hey,” Clarke says suddenly, while they’re in the kitchen getting snacks. “Have you guys ever heard of Black Sails?”  
  
  


(Needless to say, she has him at ‘gay pirate revenge’ and ‘ _Treasure Island_ prequel.’)  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping to be able to finish this fic in a week or two's time, I've already got most of the rest written, I just need to edit and add some stuff. Please, don't hesitate to let me know how you're liking it! I appreciate any comments and likes (◡‿◡✿) <3


	3. all that is me is gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Understandings, misunderstandings. Slice-of-life in the Underground. 
> 
> Bonus: Bellamy makes a grand gesture.

 

Clarke introduces Octavia and Bellamy to Wick and Lincoln sort of by accident—she’s supposed to be having a Skype-date with Raven, but the other two are there unexpectedly, so she ends up confessing the whole unbelievable story for a second time to her two other friends.

Wick has a lot of questions, mainly to do with technology and how it functions in the Underworld, while Lincoln is his normally reserved self. Clarke does notice, however, that his eyes seem (and maybe it’s a trick of the screen, but she doesn’t think so) to light up when Octavia talks.

Bellamy and Wick have almost nothing in common, but they hit it off just the same, and Clarke feels all warm and fuzzy that her old friends and her new friends get along. If only there wasn’t that pesky inter-dimensional travel problem.

“Probably not gonna mention this to anyone else in the group, though,” Wick says when they’re saying goodbyes. “I’m not sure Jasper could handle knowing that other realms exist.”

Clarke thinks about that and agrees wholeheartedly.

When the call ends and the screen goes dark, Clarke notices that Bellamy is glaring at the spot on it where Lincoln had been. _So_ , she thinks, _he noticed it too._

“Absolutely not, O,” he says blithely, though there’s no room to doubt he means it. “Abovegrounders are trouble. Remember what happened with Mom.”

Before Clarke can even put words to how offended she is by that comment, Bellamy is getting up and shuffling out of the room at a brisk pace.

“He’s…probably never gonna be over that,” Octavia offers quietly once they’re alone on the sofa.

“I don’t blame him,” Clarke says truthfully, even though she’s a little stung to know he thinks that her kind are bad news. “I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you get over.”  
. . .

It’s been three months since Clarke came to live as Persephone in the kingdom of the Underworld, and she has to say, it’s pretty cushy.

Yeah, she misses her friends something awful, and she’s mad as hell all her hard-earned grades are going to go directly down the toilet, but it really could be a million times worse.

She and Bellamy have had…well, they’ve had ups and downs—they mutually agree that the pottery wheel incident is never to be brought up again, on pain of death—but Clarke has grown pretty attached to the Blake siblings, and even, surprisingly enough, the bizarro world they live in.

Sure, you could get eaten by a Beetlejuice-esque sand worm, but there are also some pretty rad crystal caverns. And actual magick.

They’ve fallen into routines, a way of life that’s actually comfortable for everyone. Clarke exercises, plays with Cerberus, spends time with O or Bellamy, spends time on her own. She’s been painting a lot, experimenting with colors in ways she never used to before. She thinks being in an alternate dimension is good for her creative juices.

She studies things she feels like studying, and Octavia has been teaching her the ins and outs of Mt. Olympus. The need-to-know gossip, basically.

(She can hardly believe it, but even with her knowledge of mythology, Clarke never dreamed the gods and goddesses could be so fucked up. Remind her to scrub her brain of any remnants from the time she met Zeus. What a perv.)

Clarke hasn’t, if you can believe it, talked to her mom even once since she’s been gone, outside a few brief emails in which Abby detailed exactly how disappointed she was in her only child. The usual, basically.

But Clarke can’t bring herself to care too much. She’s having a good time, pursuing her hobbies and nursing her growing, problematic crush on Bellamy. Even _that_ in and of itself is kind of fun. She’d forgotten about the fun part of having a crush on someone, how your stomach flips when they’re in the room, how you get a full-body jolt when they look at you.

She just wishes she wasn’t so useless about making moves. Even though most people would call her a natural leader, Clarke has never been especially gifted in the romance department. She’s not a take-charge kind of girl until she knows one hundred percent that the other party is interested. Only _then_ can she feel free to be her normal, confidently bossy self. Usually, she waits for them to make the first move, and she’s pretty sure that Bellamy is either purposely ignoring her crush, or really just oblivious as hell.

(She doesn’t know which is worse; ok, that’s a lie, she’ll take the obliviousness any day.)

  
.  
  


“So when are you gonna confess your love to Clarke in front of the world?” Octavia asks in a bored voice one afternoon while Clarke is in the shower.

Damn. Bellamy shakes his head as if to clear the thought of naked, soapy Clarke out of his head. He coughs.

“Exactly two weeks from never, why do you ask?”

O sighs heavily, and it sounds like she’s lived a thousand lifetimes and been sick of his shit for millennia.

“You’re stupid,” she says, scolding him with her eyes. “You know, she’s gonna be going back aboveground for six months in a little less than three, and maybe you feel like you’ve got this huge window of opportunity but, well, you don’t. So, I would think about that if I were you.”

Bellamy feels vaguely stunned, and extremely called out. He sits, stone-still, as Octavia collects her magazines and wraps her earbuds around her phone before heading for the door. She leans back into the room for a moment as if to say something, then shakes her head and walks away.

Bellamy waits a beat before scowling.

“And I’m not in love with her!” he shouts for good measure, even though she’s already gone and they both know he’s so full of shit.  
  


. . .

  
“Don’t be mad at me,” Octavia says from the doorway of the living room.

The guilty note in her voice makes Clarke turn to look at the younger girl.

“What? Why would I be mad at you?”

She’s met with a _very_ sheepish grin, and a ducked head to boot.

“I, um, may have used your laptop the other day without asking when you and Bell were in the garden.” Octavia says, scuffing the toe of her Adidas slide on the floor.

Clarke is drawing a blank for almost a full minute. She’s pretty sure question marks are visible above her head until suddenly they’re replaced by a single exclamation point of understanding.

“You talked to Lincoln on Skype, didn’t you,” she breathes, eyes widening in shock. “Oh, man. You’re a lot craftier than I thought, and I already had you pegged as pretty crafty. Damn.”

Octavia flings herself onto the sofa, making huge puppy eyes at Clarke.

“He’s just so…he gets me, you know? I love talking to him. I feel like our brains were made by the same potter, or something.” she sighs dreamily, resting her chin on Clarke’s knees.

Putting the pieces together slowly, Clarke frowns.

“Hey!” she says, realizing that Octavia is way too far gone to have only talked to Lincoln once unsupervised. “How many times have you talked to him, anyway?”

Octavia looks, if it were at all possible, even more guilty. “Um,” she says, biting her lip “can I get away with saying three?”

Clarke narrows her eyes at the girl. “I dunno, would that be a lie?”

It takes only a few seconds for Octavia to crumble.

“Fine, ok, I’ve been talking to him almost every day for a few weeks now. Happy? Please don’t tell my brother, he’d kill me if he found out I was falling for someone up in your world.”

Clarke feels like a big idiot when the realization dawns on her as to Bellamy’s real reasons for not wanting O to make aboveground contacts.

“He thinks that if you meet someone you like enough up there, you’ll leave and never come back,” Clarke guesses, knowing as she speaks the words that she’s totally right.

Octavia nods sullenly, all the zinging energy gone out of her like air from a deflated beachball.

“You really like him, huh?” Clarke asks, not bothering to clarify which ‘him’ she means.

The soft, sweet look washes over Octavia’s features again, and Clarke will be damned if she’s going to purposely take that happiness away from her friend, Bellamy or no Bellamy.

“Yeah, Clarke. I really, really do.”

“Well, I guess you’ll have to figure out how you want to break it to Bell. I promise I won’t tell him but…I really think you should, O.”

The younger girl fiddles with the end of her long braid, sighing. “I know.”

. . .

“I made you something,” Bellamy says one morning over breakfast. He says it to his bowl of cereal, so Clarke isn’t sure if he’s talking to her, Octavia, or the honey-nut Cheerios.

There’s a shuffle under the table, what sounds like Adidas slide-sandal making contact with a shin bone, a yelp of pain, and then Bellamy says “ _Jesus_. Fine. _Clarke_ , I made you something. Fuck, O, what the hell?”

Clarke feels the blood rush to her face.

“You didn’t have to make me anything,” she mumbles around her mouthful of toast. “Thank you.”

Bellamy stares flatly at her. “You don’t want to see it?”

Swallowing the toast and nearly choking, Clarke shakes her head.

“No, no! Sorry, I’m just, ha ha! It’s morning time,” she adds, as if that makes her seem like less of a freak right now. “I mean, yes. Please show me, because I am a normal human who has normal human reactions to things.”

Octavia cackles, and the three of them make their way down a windy hallway and up a flight of stairs that Clarke was certain weren’t here in the east wing before today.

They come to a big door, and Bellamy fidgets nervously with the hem of his t-shirt.

“It’s not like, a big deal or anything, but, well. I know you love to create things, and there really is no good place to do that in the palace. So…yeah. If you hate it, blame Miller. He’s the one who helped with the design stuff.”

Then, without another word, he opens the door to reveal what Clarke can only describe as her own personal heaven.

It’s a huge atrium of a room, with bookshelves lining one of the walls a la _Beauty and the Beast_ , though this one is filled to the brim with big, glossy art books.

There are different lighting set-ups with collections of items ready for still-life work, a drafting table, easels, and a handsomely-carved island of teak in the center with draws full of paints and pastels and charcoals and everything Clarke could ever want. There’s a pottery wheel, a small Swedish kiln, and a whole cabinet of glazes. The whole, enormous room has the vibe of a lush art studio somewhere like Copenhagen, nothing at all like the rest of the palace’s decor. Clarke is worried that she’s going to start bawling her eyes out.

“Are you trying to bribe me into Stockholm syndrome?” she says finally, wiping at a tear that managed to escape. “Because it’s totally successful. I’m staying forever now, aboveground who?”

Octavia is beaming, and Bellamy looks bashful and pleased at the same time. Clarke throws her arms around him in a very uncharacteristic bear hug.

“Thank you so much, Bellamy. This is incredible.” she whispers into his shoulder.

“Don’t mention it, Princess,” he says, giving her a tight squeeze before letting her go. “Now go make some art. Sculpt me a giant penis or something.”

Clarke makes a face at him, but she can’t hold it for long; she’s too happy. She’s beyond happy. No one has ever done something like this for her. She’s never even had access to some of the materials in here. Each drawer and cabinet she opens is like Christmas morning all over again, tiny explosions of joy going off inside her.

“I’m gong to do a portrait of you guys,” she announces. “I want to paint everyone down here eventually. Miller, Echo, Anya. Puppy, too,” she makes a kissy face at Cerberus, who has come up to see what all the fuss was about.

(And Bellamy thought of that, too. There’s a big dog bed in one corner, with pieces of old tractor tires fashioned into monster-dog chew toys.)

“You promise you like it?” he asks, making it sound like a joke when Clarke knows it’s anything but.

“I love it, Bell.”

His answering smile is worth more than the sum total of everything in the room, and then some.

  
. . .

  
“So, what’s the deal with you and Bell?” Octavia asks one morning, about a month before Clarke is supposed to go back to her own world for the summer.

The two of them are sprawled in deck chairs on the marble terrace, dipping their toes into the petal-strewn, tepid water of a rather lovely in-ground pool.

“You guys live in like, a serious LA mansion,” Clarke says, shaking her head. “I mean, the location is iffy, no doubt, but this pool would easily put the property up two million dollars from the already insane price if it were aboveground.”

Octavia kicks some water on Clarke, who shrieks.

“Don’t avoid my question, bitch!” She says gleefully. “What’s going on with you and my big bro?”

Clarke feels squirmy all of a sudden, all awkward and young. She knows how lame it is to have a crush on someone. She knows even better how lame it is to whine about it to someone else.

"I'll tell Bellamy how I feel about him when  _you_ tell him about Lincoln," she says, sticking her tongue out when Octavia splashes more water at her.

Still, the thought of being whiny doesn’t stop her from huffing a sigh and crossing her arms over her chest.

“We’re supposed to be married, and he hasn’t even tried to kiss me. Am I like, hideous?” She asks this because she is genuinely concerned. Maybe Bellamy isn’t into humans.

She saw the demons Bellamy obviously used to mess around with; they’re stunning and freakishly beautiful, with admittedly cool extras—like horns or hooves or sleek, elegant scales—and Clarke had felt like a short little ball of plain dough in comparison. If she wasn’t so hopelessly aware of her burgeoning crush on Bellamy, Clarke might try her luck with one of the demon babes herself. Seriously, they’re that hot.

Meanwhile, as Clarke is having this small crisis, Octavia is laughing so hard that she snorts. Clarke takes the opportunity to kick some water on her.

“You think that my brother thinks you’re hideous?” Octavia asks, amusement and disbelief all over her beautiful face.

Clarke mumbles something noncommittal, sort of hating Octavia right now.

“Ugh, how are you both this stupid?” Octavia covers her eyes with one forearm, lying back against her recliner. She stretches so several of her vertebrae crack.

Clarke frowns. “What do you mean?”

The look she gets in return in s a very flat, unimpressed stare. The Blakes seem to have perfected that stare, if Bellamy’s is anything to go by.

“Seriously?” Octavia raises one perfect brow. “He built you an art studio, and you aren’t sure whether he wants to kiss you or not?”

“I thought he just used underworld magic or whatever,” Clarke admits, flushing at the thought that Bellamy might have gone to more trouble than she’d originally supposed.

“He used magic to get some of the supplies,” Octavia agrees, “I mean, we have a courier who goes up for stuff we can’t magic, so he sent Miller above for some of the harder stuff. But the room? The window installations? That was all manual labor, courtesy of Bell. And Nate, but I think he mostly sat around and berated Bell's taste in interior design.”

Clarke can’t speak for several moments. Her heart is thudding in her chest because it’s—it’s not possible, is it? He can’t—he doesn’t—

“Oh,” is all she can manage to say.

“ _Oh_ ,” agrees Octavia, raising her eyebrows. “But, knowing you two, this will drag on for another year before either one of you gets enough balls to do anything about it…”

She doesn’t say much more on the subject, though; she’s too busy being dumped off her lounge chair into the pool by Clarke.

  
  
. . .  
  


_T-minus 2 days until summer  
_

“How long were you gonna keep it a secret from me?” Bellamy isn’t yelling, he’s talking in a voice that’s scary and low and deceptively calm. Clarke can see, though, from the way his nostrils flare and his eyes are extra dark that he’s beyond pissed. “That O was talking to your friend Lincoln? He’s practically twice her age!”

He’s pissed at her.

“I told Octavia she should tell you,” Clarke argues, already feeling like she needs to defend herself. Her stomach knots itself up because of course this would blow up in her face right as she’s getting ready to leave. “I told her not to keep it a secret, and it wasn’t my secret to tell.” And then, because she’s not at all happy to be taking the flack for this, she adds, “Lincoln isn’t twice her age, by the way. Don’t be so overbearing, and maybe she’d feel like she could tell you things.”

It’s a horrible thing to say, and Clarke regrets it before she’s even gotten all the words out. Still, she’s mad enough at being the target of Bellamy’s anger that she doesn’t immediately apologize. Instead, she stands her ground, glaring right back at him.

Bellamy closes his eyes, fists clenched at his sides, and breathes out loudly through his nose.

“You know, I actually thought for a second that maybe, just _maybe_ , you weren’t the spoiled, self-important princess I had you pegged for since day one. Thanks for setting me straight on the matter.” Bellamy delivers the words with that same calm fury, and Clarke finds herself wishing he’d actually just rage at her. She gets enough of the ice routine from her mom.

“And _I_ thought that maybe you weren’t just some basement dwelling asshole who has to be right all the time.” she fires back, caught up in the volley of barbs.   
  
“Fuck you, Clarke,” he says, and leaves her standing there feeling lost and stupid, holding the book she’d borrowed from him earlier in the week. She sets it down on one of the lounge chairs by the pool and walks off on her own out into the wastes.   
  
  
She doesn’t realize she’s crying until she’s nearly a mile out, and even then, she tells herself its because of all the stupid dust in her eyes.  
  


.  
  


“What did you say to Clarke?” Octavia is pissed, arms folded over her chest, eyes flashing. She doesn’t care about anything Bellamy has to say about Lincoln. They already fought about it for an hour before he’d gone to find Clarke by the pool. “She came back ten minutes ago from being in the wastelands for four hours, and now she’s locked in her room. You have some serious explaining to do.”

That pushes Bellamy’s buttons, and he feels himself close to snapping.

“Oh, that’s funny coming from you. If you don’t feel like you need to tell me about Lincoln, I sure as hell don’t need to tell you about Clarke.” He knows he’s being juvenile and vindictive, but he can’t help it. He knows he should just shut up and go for a run or hit the punching bag for a bit, but he can’t bring himself to.

“Oh, please,” O scoffs, “you and I both know what the problem is about me talking to Lincoln. It’s not like it’s hard to guess. But I’m not ditching you to live aboveground, so it’s pointless to discuss it. I’m an adult and I’m allowed to have an online relationship if I want to. What. Did you say. To Clarke?” she punctuates each part of her enunciated phrase with a stabby poke of her index finger into his collarbone.

“Ow,” he says, rubbing the spot. “I just said ‘fuck you, Clarke.’” Then, seeing the look his sister levels at him, adds “among other things.”

“She’s leaving in two days, Bellamy. Two. Is that how you want to leave things between you for six months?” O is, as usual, infuriatingly right.

All at once, the guilt at his part in the argument that Bellamy has so far been keeping successfully pushed to a deep, dark corner of his brain, comes flooding into the forefront, making him feel like a complete piece of shit.

“Fuck,” he sighs, covering his face with his hands. “Fuck, I really messed up.”

His little sister, so much smarter than he is when it comes to so many things—especially relationships—sits down next to him on the couch and puts a comforting arm around his shoulders.

“Yeah, you really did,” she hums in agreement. “But I’m pretty sure you can fix it by apologizing.”

Bellamy’s head jerks up so he can frown at O.

“What? No way! She should apologize, too. We both said things that…”

Octavia gives him a death glare.

“Okay, okay. You’re right. I’m asshole number one here. But will she even talk to me?” he realizes all of a sudden that there’s a very real possibility that Clarke will avoid him until it’s time for her to leave. That thought fills him with the kind of panic that makes him go hot and cold all at once, a leaden ball of anxiety in his stomach.

“Only one way to find out,” Octavia shrugs. She gives him a soft smile, though, and pats him on the shoulder. “I would give her a few more hours, though, at least. She strikes me as the type who likes to process arguments alone before revisiting or making up.”

Bellamy sighs again, the exhale coming out a little shaky, and leans into his sister’s body.

“How did you get so smart anyway?” he asks.

“I dunno,” she replies. “Internet?”

  
.

  
When Clarke wakes up from her post-cry nap, she finds that a note has been slid under her door. She knows even before she unfolds it that it’s from Bellamy, and she snorts because what, are they in fifth grade now?

She sits down on the edge of her bed and starts to read, and with each scrawled line, the horrible ache in her stomach starts to dissipate a little more.

_  
Hey._

_I know we both said a lot of dumb stuff. I shouldn’t have been mad at you about the O stuff, you’re right. You said some shit, I said some shit. I can’t take back what I said, or make you forgive me, but I can ask you to, and hope that you will. We missed you at dinner, and we’ll be in the den watching some horrible movie O picked out if you want to join us. If not, I totally get it._

_Your friend (?) Bellamy Blake, professional asshole_

_P.S. I keep thinking about how I ruined your nickname. I like calling you ‘princess’ so I guess it serves me right that I’ve tainted it with my astounding display of dickery._

  
The postscript makes her smile more than it should, and Clarke is feeling a thousand times lighter when she goes to the bathroom to splash her face and put her hair into a hasty french braid.   
  
When she makes her way into the den, heaping plate of cheese and fruit balanced in one hand, Clarke suddenly isn’t so sure it was the right idea after all. Maybe it’s too awkward just yet.

“Uh, I brought snacks?” she says, though it comes out like a question.

Bellamy’s and Octavia’s heads both whip around at the sound of her voice, and the relief is so clearly written on Bell’s face that Clarke wants to cry all over again.

Neither one of them says anything about it, but when she nestles down into her usual place on the couch between them, he gives her a look that she can read as easily as any written page. They shoulders bump and push up against each other, and Clarke lets herself breathe a deep sigh of relief.

The three of them watch terrible movies until way too late, the day’s earlier turbulence unmentioned by all.

Bellamy falls asleep with his head on Clarke’s shoulder, and she doesn’t even mind Octavia’s smug grin when she presses a kiss to his messy curls.

  
  
. . .  
  
  
 _First day of summer_  
  


“So, today’s the day,” Bellamy says, rocking backwards on the balls of his feet somewhat awkwardly.

They’re all standing in the grand hall, near the door, while Clarke makes sure she has her little packed bag filled with all the things she wants to bring with her. They’re waiting on Miller now, to come and ferry her back to the land of the living.

“Yup,” Clarke agrees, trying to jam an oddly-shaped crystal formation into a pocket on the side of her backpack. “Kinda snuck up on me.”

Bellamy swallows the growing lump in his throat. He knows the feeling.

“It’s, uh,” he clears his throat, then tries again. “It’s gonna be weird without you here.”

Clarke smiles down at her sunny yellow backpack, a private sort of smile that makes Bellamy’s stomach to backflips.

“It’s gonna be weird not being here,” she says. “But we can Skype. I mean,” she adds quickly, “if you want to. No pressure.”

 _Of course I want to,_ he wants to say but doesn't, because he's a weenie.

“It’ll fly by, I’m sure,” he says instead. “Doesn’t summer always go by too fast in your world, or something? That seems to be a common sentiment in cliched TV shows and movies.”

“Don’t be a dingus,” O punches him on the arm, glaring. Then, turning to Clarke with a shy smile, she holds out a thick envelope. “Could you give this to Lincoln?”

“Of course,” Clarke says warmly, before jamming the envelope unceremoniously into her overstuffed bag. “Sorry, it’s probably not gonna retain its initial elegance.”

“Hey, I got held up working with my dad. I’m here now.” Miller appears out of nowhere, pointedly not apologizing for being an hour late. “Do you have a ride when you get back up there, someone to take you home?”

“Uh-huh,” Clarke says, thinking with a burst of excitement about Raven and Wick waiting for her near the field back near the school. “Got my ride, got my bag. Ready when you are.”

Octavia sheds a few tears, hugging Clarke tight enough to squeeze the life out of her, making her promise to come back in approximately six months.

When she lets go, Bellamy stands awkwardly like a movie extra, unsure of his direction.

“Give her a hug, idiot,” Octavia says, shoving him.

“Yeah, c’mon man,” agrees Miller in his usual monotone. “Thought you weren’t a total scrub.”

Bellamy scowls at them both, but when he makes a big joke out of holding his arms open, Clarke laughs and fits herself right into them, pressing her body against his and digging her little fingers into the small of his back.

“I’m gonna miss you the most,” she says, just loud enough for his ears only, but before he can even make sense of it or think of a reply, she’s five feet away standing next to Miller.

“Bye, Blakes!” Clarke says, taking Millers proffered arm. “Catch you on the flip side.”

And then, in a puff of glittery, Goblin King-style smoke that there’s no possible way Miller is doing on purpose, they’re both gone.  
  


The palace feels immediately empty, dull; Bellamy looks at Octavia and tries to smile reassuringly, but it falls flat. They both know they’re going to feel every single day of Clarke’s absence.

“I’ll get the booze,” O says gently. “You pick the movies. Anything you want, even a documentary about Sparta, or whatever.”

Bellamy nods, grateful as ever for his little sister.

  
As they spend the day being lazy, joking around and making mopey half-jokes about missing Clarke, Bellamy wonders over and over if he made the right choice in not confessing his awful crush before she left.

On the one hand, it might have made things super weird between them, and then when she’s back in for winter, there’d be a rift that they couldn’t fix. On the other, though, what if she meets someone up there? What if she _does_ feel something for him, like O says, but she gets tired of waiting?

It’s enough to make his head pound, so he drinks more to forget about it. In fact, he drinks until he falls asleep on the couch, neck bent at a terrible angle. 

He wakes up at midnight with a throbbing headache, and for the record, he’s still thinking about it.  
  


. . .

  
When Miller works his magic, Clarke feels a weird tugging sensation, a spin and a blur like when she got taken the first time.

She closes her eyes, gripping the smooth little stone from Bellamy tight in her fist, until she’s suddenly aware of her feet on solid ground and the smell of warm air. The sunlight on her skin is indescribable.

“Clarke!”

Raven’s voice startles her out of her inter dimensional-travel daze, and blinking in the bright sun, Clarke has just enough time to set her bag down and open her arms to receive Raven’s tackling hug.

They end up falling to the ground, but Clarke doesn’t mind. She forgot how Raven always smells like men’s body spray, deodorant, and gasoline. She’s missed it.

“You’re so pale, oh my god,” is the first thing Raven says after they both get to their feet. “I made Wick drive, he’s waiting in the car. I figured you’d wanna get back to the apartment and crash before going out to see anyone.”

Clarke tries to convey with another hug how grateful she is for Raven’s forethought. She really can’t deal with seeing too many of her friends today; she’s jet-lagged. Magic-lagged. Whatever.

“Could we stop for burgers on the way?” She asks, suddenly remembering that fast food is a thing she can have now.

“Your wish is my command, pal,” Raven grins, and they make their way through the field to the car parked on the gravel shoulder.  
  


.  
  


She can’t believe how good it feels to be in her apartment.

Everything is just like she left it; her clothes are still on the floor, her makeup bag still half-unzipped and sitting on her bed.

She takes a shower to rinse off the travel grime, then shuffles out into the living room where Raven is waiting on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and a six-pack of craft beer.

“Netflix and chill?” She asks, holding an uncapped bottle out for Clarke, who takes it happily.

The beer is cold and perfect, a flowery, light wheat ale called Ophelia.

“They didn’t have any called Persephone, I checked,” Raven smirks, swigging from her own bottle.

“Ha,” Clarke shoves her with her shoulder when she plops down on the couch. “What are we watching? Or did you really want to ‘Netflix and chill’? Should I have worn sexy underwear?”

Raven grins, leaning in to peck Clarke on the cheek.

“I love you, and you’re hot as fuck, but no.”

Clarke settles back into the cushions, leaning against her best friend, and they scroll through the options before deciding on some bad teen comedy they’re just going to make fun of.

About twenty minutes into the movie, just when the cute-but-outcast girl is starting to realize her feelings for the stereotype-douche-secretly-nice guy, Raven nudges Clarke’s thigh with hers and flicks a piece of popcorn at her.

“So, are you gonna tell me?” She’s looking at Clarke with her eyes widened expectantly, which never means anything good.

“What am I telling you, exactly?” Clarke asks around a mouthful of extra-buttery popcorn.

Raven snorts.

“How’s tall, dark and nerdy in the sack? I’m assuming your wifely duties include hitting that on the— _hey!_ Watch it!” she laughs and struggles to move away when Clarke starts whacking her with a throw pillow.

“You’re such a dick!” Clarke shouts, smiling despite herself, and hits her one last time with the pillow before flopping back into her original spot on the sofa. “And we aren’t—we haven’t…” she struggles to spit the words out, because it sucks, admitting that things aren’t how she wishes they were. “It isn’t like that,” she settles on eventually. “We’re platonic partners. There’s no clause that states the marriage must be consummated.”

Raven whoops loudly, throwing her arms up.

“Platonic partners!” She clutches at Clarke’s leg, gasping through her guffaws. “You’re fucking with me, right? You’ve gotta be fucking with me. There’s no way you aren’t hitting that.”

Clarke looks away, feeling her cheeks burning.

“Um,” she says.

“Stop,” Raven’s eyes go wider, and she gapes a little. “You want to, so what’s the problem?” She shifts a little, pulling her legs up onto the couch so she can drape them across Clarke’s lap. “You cannot tell me that boy’s not interested. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”

Clarke sighs, reaching across Raven’s legs for a fresh beer from on the coffee table.

“I thought he might feel the same way, and I was going to tell him, but…” she looks down at the tan legs in her lap, noting each scrape and bruise and scab. “After we got in that big fight about Octavia secretly talking to Lincoln, I figured it wasn’t the best idea.”

She frowns, remembering how upset Bellamy had been.

“You guys made up, though, right?” Raven looks concerned, all traces of amusement gone from her face.

“Yeah, no, we did,” Clarke waves a hand. “Pretty quick, too. But…I hated him being mad at me. It was miserable. We didn’t talk for almost a whole day, it was like…” she shakes her head, unable to put the awful feelings of those days into adequate words.

“So,” Raven says slowly, “You think that by telling him you’re into him, you’ll thereby drive him away forever, because he would be so repulsed by your affections? Griffin, I am trying really hard to be understanding and patient with you right now, but _you_ are fucking trying _me_.”

  
. . .

  
Lying on the floor of the den, eyes glued to the television without really seeing whatever’s playing, Bellamy is trying to tell himself that he’s not being ridiculous right now. Clearly, it’s going well.

“Stop moping, Bell, she’s coming back.” Octavia kicks Bellamy in the side with the toe of her boot, and the sound he makes is a very pathetic hybrid between a groan and a whine. “She’ll be back in six months and you can tell her all about how dumb in love you are with her.”

“I’m not moping,” he says petulantly. “I just happen to be in a funk. It’s got nothing to do with Clarke.” he glares at his sister, then adds “And I’m not dumb in love with her. Brat.”

“Yeah, big bro, and denial is just a river in Egypt. Clarke is my friend, too, and I’m gonna miss her a lot while she’s gone, but you don’t see me sulking on the actual floor about it,” Octavia points out.

And just like that, Bellamy realizes with a sigh that he might be being just a little ridiculous. He picks himself up, tilting his head to crack his neck.

“What should we do today?” He raises his eyebrows at his sister.

O just grins broadly and says, “So, there’s this cave that me and Clarke found, and there’s this rad crystal cavern with a pool…”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, then grins back at her.  
  


. . .

  
It’s the Fourth of July, and Clarke is pleasantly buzzed. Okay, she’s a little more than buzzed—but still, it’s the good kind. All her friends have gathered at Monty’s parents’ cabin on the lake upstate, for food and a bonfire and a picture-perfect weekend away.

She’s sprawled in a very comfy Adirondack chair, red solo cup in hand, feeling warm and tingly. Her drunk-brain very predictably drifts into the sizable corner of Clarke’s brain devoted to Bellamy, and she smiles happily.

The air is balmy, like stepping into a warm bath, and fireflies wink in and out above the tall grass. She thinks about how much she loves her friends; Wells, Jasper, Monty, Lincoln, Raven, Wick, Harper, Monroe…even Murphy. It’s nice, being with them.

She just happens to wish that Bellamy was here. And Octavia, she amends quickly; she knows everyone would love Octavia just as much as she does.

But, her thoughts inevitably circle back to Bellamy, turning her insides to goo and making her wish for autumn to hurry up.

“I’m married,” she says, warmth flooding her as the words leave her mouth. Nobody hears her, though, so she says it again, and louder.

“Bullshit,” Murphy says from the other side of the fire pit, sounding bored.

“Yeah, Clarke, stop kidding around,” Raven says with a bright grin and murder in her eyes. She’s pretending, like they agreed before, like Clarke really was just on some wild spur-of-the-moment romantic trip across Europe.

“I _am_ ,” Clarke asserts, ignoring Raven. Some of her drink sloshes out over the side of her cup. “He’s got the best freckles, and the best voice, and he loves mythology…”

“Does this mystery man have a name and/or photo?” Monty asks, plopping himself into the vacant chair beside Clarke’s. “Or is he—as I think we all assume—a figment of your imagination?”

She makes an offended sound, then fumbles for her phone. She then proceeds to type in the incorrect passcode three times before eventually succeeding.

The picture she pulls up is the one she took when they were all in the pool that night, the strange desert of the Underworld looking fairly innocuous when captured in a photo. It’s of Bell and Octavia, both of them grinning. Clarke feels her heart give a little achey throb, looking at Bellamy’s smile on the screen, his whole face lit up, curls damp and pushed back off his forehead. She sighs wistfully, then passes the phone to Monty, who raises his eyebrows.

“Did you save this from some random dude’s Instagram, Clarke?” He asks.

“Nooo,” Clarke whines. “That’s Bellamy, and he’s my husband.” She snatches her phone back, then thinks of something great. She’s great at ideas. She beams, then opens her contact list. “I’m gonna call him.”

“Oh, buddy, no,” Raven grimaces. “Do _not_ drink and dial.”

But Clarke has already found Bellamy in her contacts, and she’s squinting to try and press the correct icon to make a voice call, but they’re just so small right now for some reason. After several moments of this, she slumps back in her chair, defeated.

“I can’t see the call button,” she laments, pouting slightly.

Wick snorts into his cup, but chokes a little when Raven elbows him hard in the ribs.

“Why don’t you just send him a snap of all of us instead?” She says gently, reaching for Clarke’s phone. “Here, I’ll help. You just lean in and smile real pretty, okay?”

That sounds like a good idea, and Clarke smiles happily, cheek to cheek with Raven. The rest of their friends crowd in, and the picture ends up being good enough that most of them want her to send it to them later.

She doesn’t see what Raven’s captioned it, but she doesn’t mind. She’s just happy Bellamy will see it, and that he’ll know she’s thinking about him.

.

“Did you get that snap from Clarke with all her friends?” Octavia flings herself onto the sofa, reaching for the remote.

Bellamy hasn’t checked his phone in a few hours, but the mere mention of Clarke’s name has him scrambling to dig it out of the couch cushions it’s fallen in-between.

Sure enough, there are a few snaps from Clarke waiting. The first one is a video of Raven and the scruffy dude Bellamy assumes must be Raven’s boyfriend Wick, and Clarke is narrating in hushed tones like she’s Steve Irwin. The second is with one of those funny filters, and it’s Raven and Clarke sporting slightly larger eyes and glowing pink flower crowns.

The third one, though, is from only a half-hour ago—ten o’clock Aboveground time—and it makes Bellamy’s breath catch. There are a bunch of people all crammed in, with Clarke in the middle, beaming and looking flushed and tipsy, and the caption is #missingmyhusbandselfie.

“Shit,” Bellamy says aloud, making his sister snort.

“OK, so you just saw it now. C’mon, I’m ready. Hit me with all the overanalyzing questions I know are already in your mental queue,” she says with a smug smile.

Bellamy wants to protest at that, but he realizes that she’s a hundred percent right. She does, after all, know him better than anyone does.

Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath.

Then, he asks, “...so, do you think it was like a ‘I miss my husband ha-ha, because we’re platonic married,’ kind of thing? Or was it like, ‘I miss you in an actual wife-missing-husband’ kind of way?”

“There we go,” Octavia gives him a thumbs up. “I think you’re a big idiot, and that you should probably just send her a text saying that you’re gonna plant a big one on her when she comes back.”

Bellamy frowns. “I’m not gonna say that.”

He won’t admit it, but for at least a nanosecond, he considers it.

“I’m just saying, you should warn her,” O says with a shrug. “I know you, and you’re probably gonna be so overcome with, like, passion or whatever when she gets back, you’ll just swoop in for a kiss she’s not expecting.”

  
  
. . .

  
Summer goes by fast, faster than Clarke thought it would, and by the end, she's hugging all her friends goodbye (some of whom are aware she's going back to another dimension, other who are convinced she's heading back to Florence for Francesco and Art History) and getting ready to go to the field so Miller can pick her up. 

She's got tons of stuff in a suitcase, mostly beauty stuff she thought Octavia would get a kick out of, but she's got some books for Bellamy, too. 

Her stomach flips and twists when she thinks about Bellamy, about seeing him again. They've talked on Skype a handful of times, and she sends snaps to both him and O at least twenty times a day, but she's... _nervous_ to see him again. What if he spent the summer getting cozy with some supernatural babe? What if he realized she's just a boring human and--

"I'm not a mindreader, but I can see when you're overthinking things, Griffin." Raven says from across the room, not bothering to look up from her copy of a monthly mechanics publication. "Stop stressing. Just lay one on him first thing when you see him." 

"UNHELPFUL," shouts Clarke, chucking a dishtowel at her friend. "Hey, do you think they'd like if I brought them some candy? I know it's like, the one thing they can't get totally right using magic." 

.  
  
"She's coming back tomorrow!" squeals Octavia, bouncing up and down. "Aren't you so excited? Clarke will be here in less than 24 hours!" 

Bellamy is having flashbacks to the days before Clarke's initial arrival in the Underworld, and though he absolutely loathes to admit it, it feels kind of nostalgic in a good way. And he'd be a big liar if he said he wasn't counting down to the day she'd be back.   
  
"Yeah, yeah." he grumbles. "She's probably gonna be all depressed to be back here. She's coming off a summer with her friends, doing all the stuff she can't do when she's here." 

"Why are you always such a downer when I need you to keep me all pumped up?" Octavia groans. "Whatever, I'm gonna make a cake!"   
  
She flounces out of the den, leaving Bellamy to roll around on the couch, unable to get comfortable, thinking way too much about what he'll say to Clarke, what she might say back, and whether or not laying a big smooch on her is, in fact, an okay idea. 

. 

Octavia's been away since 4 in the morning, full of boundless energy, making sure everything is extra festive for Clarke's return.   
  
Bellamy, on the other hand, has showered, eaten two bowls of cereal, and paced in approximately 100 circles.   
  
There's only an hour or two until she arrives, and he's suddenly unsure of himself in the extreme. He questions whether or not the plain white t-shirt he threw on makes him look like a doofus or not. 

"Are you ready?" O says softly, gentling her buoyant mood just enough so Bellamy can breathe. "Don't worry, Bell. Clarke is gonna be so happy to see you." 

And it's exactly what he needs to hear, so he gives his sister a hug, makes himself a cup of chamomile, and plunks down on the sofa to wait it out.   
  
. 

Her goodbyes aren't really as tearful as she thought they'd be.   
  
Clarke gives Raven the biggest hug she can before wandering out into the field, bags in hand, feeling only slightly ridiculous to be wandering out into a field with luggage.   
  
She looks at her phone once, wondering if there'll be any signs that Miller's approaching. When she looks up, she feels a tap on her shoulder, and screams. 

"What the fuck?!" she demands, punching Miller on the arm. 

"Hey," he says, giving a little wave and looking as unfazed as ever. "Ready to go?"   
  
"Ready as I'll ever be," she says, feeling a weird sense of deja vu.   
  
The magic doesn't surprise her as much this time, but she still feels like her stomach is going to come out through her kneecaps. All in all, she'd give it a 5/10 as far as transportation goes.   
  
  
.   
  
  
“So,” Clarke says, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Bellamy says back, feeling like he would rather be anywhere than here, in the stupidly ornate entrance hall to the Underworld, with the many eyes and ears of his undead friends surrounding them. And, of course, his nosy sister.  
  
(For some reason, every single demon Bellamy knows decided to make it their personal beeswax to be in the palace right around the time Clarke was supposed to come back. He hates them so much, seriously.) 

Clarke takes a breath, and somewhere in the half-second between inhaling and exhaling, her whole body seems to relax, and before Bellamy can even realize what’s happening, she’s in his arms.

He doesn’t waste a second in wrapping his arms around her tightly, crushing her close so he can inhale the warm, vibrant scent of her. He presses a kiss to the top of her hair, and it hits him just how much he’s missed her.

“I missed you,” Clarke mumbles into the fabric of Bellamy’s shirt. The words make him feel warm all over.

  
“Missed you, too.” he says into her hair. Because, _duh_.  
  
  
.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually coming along a lot faster than I thought it would. I know it's a super slow burn, but in the final chapter, I promise there'll be all the payoff and some smut as well. <3 thanks for reading (◡‿◡✿) Only one chapter to go!


	4. over the sea to Skye (pt. 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sex is in this chapter, finally. I didn't realize how long I'd actually dragged this slow burn out. Thanks to anyone who's read!

  
“How was the quote-unquote real world?” Bellamy asks over dinner.

The dining hall is still ridiculous, all marble and columns, black table polished to a mirror sheen and long enough to seat fifty—no, instead of eating in there, the two of them are eating in the chambers that Bellamy has come to think of as theirs, sprawled on the sofa and watching Netflix. Octavia is off somewhere, probably on Skype with Lincoln again.

(Bellamy will never quite get over the shame he’s got about his initial reaction to the guy. He’s actually really cool, which makes it so much more embarrassing.)

“It was the same as it ever was, I guess,” Clarke answers, licking some butter from her fingers. “Summer is hot, I went camping with my friends, saw a lot of movies for free because Jasper works at the theater in the summer. Got a sunburn. Fought with mom.”

Bellamy snorts.

“What did you tell your mom about where you’d been all winter?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, and recounts for Bellamy how her mother nearly lectured her to death over the phone—because she couldn’t be bothered to come visit—the merits of an education, on how stupid it was to run off with some boy.

“Some boy? Is it wrong that I’m a tad bit offended to not be ‘some man,’ at least?” Bellamy asks around the last mouthful of his pasta.

Clarke catches his eye and grins at him from across the sofa, shifting so that she can poke him in the side with one socked foot. It makes the back of his neck grow warm, but that pleasant dipping feeling in his stomach returns with a vengeance. She’s here, for the next six months.

With him.

“I told her that I was accompanying Francesco—that’s your alter-ego where my mom is concerned—on some archaeological dig in Europe, so I won’t have great internet connection, and blah, blah.” Clarke waves a hand. “I left out the part about us being married, though. Figured I’d save that for when I _really_ want to piss her off.”

Bellamy grins, ignoring the way his pulse speeds up when she says married. He has spent the last six months reminding himself sternly that this is not that kind of marriage. Clarke is his wife only in name.

Which kind of sucks, so, he doesn’t really love thinking about it.

Especially not now, when Clarke is real and here, looking somehow both adorable and hot in her sweatpants and paint-stained t-shirt.

“What about you?” she asks, nudging Bellamy with her foot. “What did you do while I was gone, besides brood and probably write emo poetry about missing me?”

“Shut up,” he swats at her foot. “I mostly just hung out with Octavia and Miller. Read some books, watched the new season of Outlander in its entirety…”

“You did not!” Clarke shrieks indignantly, standing up on the couch, brandishing a throw pillow like a weapon. “You watched the whole season without me? You suck so hard!”

Bellamy knows he’s grinning like a jerk, but he can’t help it; it’s just so much fun to rile her up. Of course he didn’t watch the new season of Outlander without her. He maybe watched like, five different Korean soap operas, but he knows Clarke wanted to watch Outlander with him and O. So, he didn’t watch it.

(Octavia had mocked him about it, singing a little song about how much he looooved Clarke until he threw a decorative urn at her.)

Clarke looks so offended, standing there with her throw pillow and her hands on her hips, Bellamy almost loses it.

“Oh, yeah,” he lies, “totally. I especially loved the episode where Jamie and Claire have a threesome with Dougal.”

“You fucker!” Clarke chucks the pillow at him and sits back down, starting to smile. “I was ready to be really pissed at you. I’m talking, like, at least two hours of silent treatment.”

Bellamy throws his head back and laughs. “Only two? I’m sure you could go longer than that, Princess. If you were really mad.”

He thinks about that fight they had before she left, cringing inwardly at how irrational he’d been about the whole thing. Judging by the way Clarke’s eyes dart away, she’s remembering it, too.

It’s weird to think that something that had felt so drastic at the time now just seems like a distant, inconsequential bump in the road. Bellamy hopes it feels that way for Clarke, too.

Luckily, she smiles and ducks her head, her cheeks flushing that pretty pink.

“Yeah, well,” she mumbles, like she’s suddenly shy, or something, “that was before.”

Bellamy is naturally an asshole, so a part of him wants to tease her about what he’s pretty sure—at least, he’s hoping—that she’s about to say. He manages to suppress that urge, though, miraculously.

“Before what?” he asks, scooting closer to her on the sofa. He’s been planning and plotting in his head for months about how to make a move, and wondering when, and if he even should. He could be wrong—and as Octavia loves to tell him, he often is—but, Bellamy’s pretty sure that his moment could be coming up.

Clarke hugs her knees to her chest, making herself impossibly tiny.

“Well…you know,” she says, earning a smirk from Bellamy. “Ugh, shut up! I don’t know, okay? Can we just pretend I didn’t say anything dumb, and go back to making fun of Ghost Adventures?”

On the television screen, the host of Ghost Adventures is calling out to spirits. He is also wearing fake glasses, fingerless gloves, and what appears to be glue in his hair.

But Bellamy could not give less of a shit about Zak Bagans and his admittedly hilarious antics. Not right now; not when the girl he’s embarrassingly in love with is flustered and giving Bellamy the kind of signals that make him really, really hopeful.

He takes a breath, and exhales a little shakily before scooting even closer to Clarke.

“Uh, I kind of really need to know what you mean, though. It’s, um, important.” he says, and hopes he isn’t too pathetically obvious.

Clarke peeks out at him from under the yellow-gold curtain of her hair.

“Important?”

“Yeah. Yes,” he says, a little too quickly to seem even the slightest bit cool. Luckily, Clarke doesn’t seem to notice or care; she’s fiddling with the ends of her hair and biting her lip.

“Okay,” she agrees, turning to face Bellamy. “But no interrupting until I’m done, alright?”

Bellamy nods, trying not to seem overeager.

Clarke sighs, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear before starting to speak.

“So, things were kind of weird between us the day I left, right?” she looks at Bellamy, who nods in agreement. “Right. And that was pretty much all me. I was starting to really admit that I was, um, feel things for you. And it freaked me out, honestly. I just…I wasn’t sure how much of it was real, and how much was just like, a weird proximity thing.”

It stings a little, but Bellamy knows she was right to be concerned. He bumps her knee with his so she’ll keep going.

“And then, after what happened with Octavia and Lincoln…I hated fighting with you like that. I never want you to be that angry at me again.” Clarke looks at her lap, and Bellamy winces thinking about how much he’d overreacted with the Lincoln thing. He never wants to say such shitty things to Clarke again, either.

“Anyway, when I got back aboveground, it was like—it was like ‘oh my god, I’m so happy to be doing all this stuff with my friends,’ but…I kept wishing you were there, too.” she huffs out a laugh, and Bellamy may or may not be holding his breath. “It was honestly so stupid. Like, okay, I’d see something or think of something funny or weird, and I’d turn to tell you and then get so bummed you weren’t there. Raven wouldn’t stop making fun of me.”

“I know the feeling,” Bellamy says breathlessly, thinking about all the mocking he’s endured at the hands of his sister.

“And then, I got drunk at Monty’s Fourth of July bonfire and apparently told anyone who’d listen about my hot secret husband. Apparently, I also tried to drunk-dial you. Raven and her boyfriend Wick stopped me, thank god,” Clarke says, turning a new, exciting shade of pink. “That’s the night I sent you that group snap, remember?”

“Shame on them,” Bellamy shakes his head. “I would have loved to hear drunk-you gush over how hot I am.”

“Ass,” Clarke shoves him with her shoulder, but she’s smiling. “So, what I’m trying to say is, I think it’s safe to say that my feelings for you still exist when I’m not down here.”

Bellamy stares at her, mouth slightly agape. He knows he should probably say something, but he’s quite frankly speechless. It’s a strange, wonderful thing, when your wildest dreams come true.

He snaps out of his daze to find Clarke frowning a little.

“Look, I know I seem like the kind of girl who would be all ‘take what she wants’ in a romantic situation, but I need to be sure I’m not gonna make an ass of myself, you know?” she says with a smile, but the teasing note in her voice isn’t enough to cover up the uncertainty.

Bellamy hates that uncertainty on her. He thinks that she should never, ever be uncertain. She deserves everything.

“Sorry,” he mutters, “shitty husband.” before taking her face in his hands and sliding their mouths together.

It’s not the smoothest kiss in history, nor is it the sexiest, or the most romantic. But, the thing is, it feels like all those things to Bellamy. When Clarke smiles against his mouth, reaching for him so she can fist one hand in the front of his shirt, he feels almost dizzy with it.

When they part, Bellamy is sure he must look like a completely besotted idiot, but he really doesn’t care. Because Clarke is looking at him like he’s something wonderful. Her lips are parted slightly, flushed from being kissed, and she’s never looked more beautiful.

A huge grin blooms across her face, and she laughs for the sheer joy of the moment.

“I should have done that as soon as you got back,” Bellamy tells her breathlessly, still cupping her jaw in his hand. “I love you, Clarke. I’m like, unbelievably dumb in love with you.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” she breathes. “I thought so, but like I said, I wanted to be sure,” she adds, then smiles triumphantly at him before climbing up to straddle his lap and kiss him again. It’s deeper and hotter than the first kiss, and it makes Bellamy’s head spin.

They make out for a long time, just drunk on the fact that they can kiss each other, that they’re allowed now, until Clarke pulls her t-shirt up over her head and throws it on the floor.

“Oh my god,” Bellamy groans, eye-level with Clarke’s incredible breasts. “Are you trying to kill me?”

She grins and wriggles her hips so she’s grinding down against his dick through his pajama pants.

“Maybe,” she says slyly. “Should we maybe go somewhere else? Like, with a bed?”

It takes several seconds for Bellamy to realize what Clarke’s asking—he blames the lack of blood flow to his brain currently—but when he does, he all but picks her up and throws her over his shoulder, caveman style, heading for his bedroom.

When the door is shut (and locked) behind them, and Clarke is lying back on her elbows on Bellamy’s bed, he takes a moment to silently thank whatever stars had to align to place Clarke Griffin in his life. He’s going to write Persephone a ten-page thank you note. He’s going to send her a fruit basket.

“Are you just gonna stare at me all night, or are you gonna come over here and take the rest of my clothes off?” she says, raising an eyebrow.

Bellamy doesn’t hesitate, fitting himself between her legs so he can kiss her some more, working his way down to her jaw and her neck, loving the way she lifts her chin to expose more of it for him.

“Gonna mark you up,” he mumbles, sucking at a spot just above her collarbone that has her gasping.

“ _God_ , Bellamy,” Clarke whimpers, arching against him and reminding him that he hasn’t even gotten her bra off yet.

It’s the kind that hooks in the front, and he makes short work of it. When the bra has been banished from the bed, Bellamy stares down at Clarke—at his wife—with lust heavy in his blood.

Her breasts are perfect, and he tells her so. As he gently squeezes them, sucking the pale pink nipples into peaks, he tells her again. She wriggles out of her sweatpants after a minute or two, and when Bellamy looks down, he can see the damp patch spreading across the fabric of her underwear.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, and moves lower on the bed. He looks up at Clarke and asks, “Can I?”

“Fuck, yeah,” she pants, and lifts her hips when Bellamy strokes one teasing finger up to the top of where the dampness begins.

“These need to come off,” he tugs at the waistband of her underwear, and she obliges.

Bellamy settles back down between Clarke’s legs again, feeling his aching erection twitch in his boxers at the sight of her; she’s all pink and glistening wet, and it’s for him.

“Please, Bell,” Clarke whines, and that’s all he needs.

He dips his head low and nearly comes in his pants when he finally gets his mouth on her. She tastes even better than he thought she would; all musky and sweetly ripe. He licks up from her cunt to her clit with the flat of his tongue, loving the way she bucks against him.

Bellamy closes his lips over her clit, sucking gently, and reaches up with one hand to roll her left nipple between his thumb and finger.

And, fuck, she just gets wetter and wetter, and when Bellamy moves lower so he can dip his tongue inside of her, he can feel her slickness on his face. She grinds down on him, whining for him to fuck her deeper with his tongue.

“I’m—fuck, Bellamy,” Clarke whimpers, and he knows that she’s close.

“Come for me, Clarke,” he lifts his mouth off of her just long enough to say, then flicks his tongue over her engorged clit again. She does, with a choked gasp that sounds exactly like his name.

She’s barely finished her orgasm when she pulls him up for a messy kiss, bringing her hand down to guide his straining dick into her.

“I’m on the pill, don’t worry,” she says, and it should break the mood a little, how matter-of-fact she says it, but it doesn’t, and when Bellamy slides in, he feels like there are explosions going on in his head.

There are no more words spoken between them, just breaths and sighs and sounds of the right spot being touched in exactly the right way, and they manage to go several more rounds before passing out in a sweaty, exhausted heap.

Just before he gives in to sleep completely, Bellamy thinks about how lucky he is.  
  


. . .  
  


_Pre-epilogue_   
  
  


“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this, Clarke?” Bellamy asks for the millionth time since they set out on this bogus journey to seek court with Hades. “We can still just go back to the palace, make a pizza…”

Clarke shoots him a look that could kill a lesser man, and shuts him up completely. She’s determined, he knows, to say her piece in front of the big guy downstairs.

Ironically enough, the big guy downstairs lives at the top of a stupidly long stone stairway. Seriously, they’re climbing for almost three hours just to get to the front doors.

When finally they’re able to knock, Bellamy sticks his hands in his pockets and fights the urge to whistle. Clarke squares her shoulders, small though they may be, and waits for the heavy iron doors to open.

…which of course, they do. Slowly, like in a movie. The mood is somewhat destroyed, though, when they see who is doing the opening.

“What d'you want? I’m trying to watch this documentary on Iggy Pop,” says Hades himself, lord and ruler of the Underworld. He’s wearing a blue bathrobe with holes in it and a stain on the left sleeve.

“We have some things to discuss,” Clarke says, pushing past him to walk into Hades’ actual home.

Hades looks at Bellamy questioningly, and all Bellamy can do is shrug and follow Clarke’s lead.

When they’re all standing in a parlor even huger and more ridiculous then the one in Bellamy and Octavia’s palace, Hades seems to take stock of his surroundings and realize they are, in fact, a pigsty. There’s clothes everywhere, dirty plates that he’s obviously choosing not to magic away or magically clean.

“What did you want to discuss, cupcake?” Hades asks, looking tired.

He’s so much less intimidating than Bellamy had thought he’d be. He’s never really spent much time with the guy, but now he’s pretty sure that this is not what he was picturing. This is not what anyone would picture.

The guy is lanky and Irish, with scads of bad flash tattoos on every inch of visible skin. His blue-black hair, which Bellamy remembers as being slicked up into a wild facsimile of an Elvis pompadour, is in total disarray. He’s got circles under the bags under his eyes.

“Ew,” Clarke makes a face. “Don’t ‘cupcake’ me, especially not while you look like,” she gestures wildly at Hades’ ensemble, “that.”

Bellamy is torn between laughing and begging Clarke to please just lay off the guy, because he could kill them.

Surprisingly, though, Hades doesn’t seem angered by her remarks. Instead, his faces softens, gray eyes growing horrifyingly damp with—Bellamy would like to adamantly deny—tears.

“You’re more like her than any I ever met,” he says thickly, in his ridiculous brogue. “Don’t look much like her, but you have her spirit. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Clarke Griffin,” she says, then for some reason sticks her hand out for him to shake.

Even more bafflingly, he accepts, shaking it somewhat limply.   
  
“What can I do for you, _Ms_. Clarke Griffin?” Hades asks sportingly.

Taking a breath, Bellamy watches as Clarke composes herself. He knows that right now, she’s getting her words together in the order she finds they’ll be most effective. It’s kind of terrifying, but also kind of really hot.

“You can start by getting the hell over it,” she says, adopting a conversational tone. “But if you can’t do that—which is totally your own business, even if it’s been like, way too long, that’s just my opinion, but whatever—then let the Blakes and me go. Find some other tributes. I know I said it was your business but seriously, can’t you just get the hell over it?”

Bellamy grinds his teeth, utterly convinced that she’s definitely crossed the line this time, and prepares himself to be smote on the mountainside just like Gandalf smote the Balrog.

“Cheeky! Aren’t you a cheeky one,” Hades claps his blue-white hands together and grins, showing a mouth full of a few too many teeth. He turns to Bellamy, laughing like he’s delighted with the whole thing and goes, “Int she something?”   
  
“Uh, yeah,” he says, trying to convey to Clarke with his eyes just how fucking bizarre this whole thing is. “She is that…thing…”

“But y’see,” Hades says, grin slipping away, “S’not so simple, what-all you were sayin’ before. I said awful things to her. Bloody awful.” he shakes his head sadly. “An’ all because she’d said she wanted a child. I’m an eejit, yeah?”

It all makes a horrible sort of sense now, why the whole thing got so wildly blown out of proportion.

“Let me guess,” Bellamy says slowly, “you hate the idea of raising a child down here, and your own memories as a kid are awful, but instead of just saying that to Persephone like any normal person—er, god—you got mad at her and pushed her away by being a giant dick.”

Hades looks away guiltily.

“Might’ve done,” he says to the clock he’s looking at rather than Bellamy.

“And then,” Bellamy continues, emboldened by his not having been murdered yet, “when she was angry at your shitty response, and probably hurt, you took it and twisted it around into an excuse to be even more of a dick to her, yeah?”

“Mm…” Hades makes a noncommittal noise.

“Have you ever tried, oh I don’t know, _telling_ her all of this? Just laying it all out there so she can get the full picture before cutting you out of her life for the next billion years?” Clarke interjects, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s too late for that, innit?” Hades runs a hand through his filthy hair, making it stick up in front. “She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. I was too blind to see what a prick I’d been until it was too late. She’d make a lovely mother,” he adds morosely.

Clarke fiddles with her phone in her pocket, and Bellamy thinks that now is not the time to be sending covert texts. He doesn’t mention it, though. He also can’t get over the fact that Hades is an Irish guy.

“What would you say to her, though? I mean, if you got one more chance to talk to Persephone,” Clarke asks, and she’s using her ‘kind and knowing’ expression, which is basically a lethal weapon.

Hades blows out a breath, and Bellamy is hit with a wave of pure alcohol—which isn’t hard to believe, judging by the empties all over the floor.

“Fuck, I dunno…probably something like ‘sorry, I’m a useless twat’?” he glances at Clarke, like he’s hoping she’ll let him off the hook.

“Mmmmm nope,” she shakes her head, wrinkling her nose. “Try again. It’ll be cathartic, I promise.”

“I’m no Catholic,” Hades frowns, misunderstanding. “But have it your way, then.” He lets go another big, heavy sigh, and his expression turns softer and sadder than any Underworld ruler has any right to be.

“Alright, fine. I’d tell her that I miss her so fucking much it hurts, first off. I miss her laughin’ at me, how sharp she always were, that sort of thing. Made me smile more than Cerberus, which, mind you, is no small feat.” he gives a half-smile. “Then, I’d tell her how sorry I am for the whole mess. I acted like a jerk, a complete arsehole. I’d tell her about how shite me life were as a kid, confess the whole awful mess of it, and then tell her that I was afraid. I was bloody terrified, wasn’t I? Then, ’course I’d have to tell her that’s no excuse, that I don’t get to behave like a twat just because I’m afraid. Then, finally, I’d tell her I love her, I fuckin’ love her, but if she wants to stay away, that’s her right. She doesn’t owe me a thing.”

Bellamy is speechless for a few moments, as is Clarke. They stand in silence for what seems like years until a crackly voice coming from the vicinity of Clarke’s pocket shatters it completely.

“You couldn’t say all that to me in all this time?” it demands, voice smooth and sharp all at once, like slow-poured honey onto biscuits. “Clarke, honey, can you take me outta your pocket, please? I wanna see this sorry motherfucker’s face.”

Clarke pulls her phone from her pocket with shaking hands, holding it up with the screen visible to all. On it, a FaceTime call clocks in at around seven minutes or so. The woman who is currently making an exasperated face is, without doubt, Persephone.

“Hey, big daddy,” she says —Bellamy both hopes and does not hope— to Hades. “You really mean all that?”   
  
She’s got huge eyes, liquid and dark and framed by ridiculously long lashes, and her tightly-curled hair is cropped close. Her lips are painted a vibrant shade of fruit punch red. Bellamy has to admit, she’s a knockout. He and Clarke have a brief, meaningful conversation about it with just their eyebrows.

 _Big daddy?_ she mouths silently, to which he can only pull a grimace in response.

“‘Course I do,” Hades says, voice cracking. “ _Jaysus_ , how could I forget how beautiful you are? Sorry, s’inappropriate. How are you, love?”

Bellamy is pretty sure he’s never seen a more mismatched couple in his life, but he keeps his mouth firmly shut on the subject.

On Clarke’s phone, Persephone laughs like someone who didn’t mean to.

“You look awful, baby. You forget where the shower was?” she teases, laughing some more with that lovely voice of hers, like a southern belle gone rogue. “I’ll be honest, we been fightin’ so long, I forget what-all we even said to each other, just remember it wasn’t pretty. I stopped being mad centuries ago.”

“Me too, love,” Hades murmurs, reaching to take the phone from Clarke’s hand. “Are you alright, though? People being on the up-and-up with youse, and that? Your mam still sends me hate mail, even though you aren’t here.”

They both chuckle softly at that, and Bellamy has never felt so much like an unwilling voyeur in all his life.

“How did you—?” he whispers to Clarke.

“—Looked her up while I was aboveground, we talked. I told her I wanted out of this, and she agreed to at least try,” she whispers back.

Bellamy is, not for the first or last time, deeply impressed by Clarke’s cunning. She’s a total Slytherin.

“I wanna let it go, baby,” Persephone says, her olive-dark skin gleaming in the sunlight that’s shining down on her wherever she is. “I wanna put this in the Styx and be done with it. I’m so tired, so tired.”

“Y’got no idea how much I want the same,” Hades says earnestly, his eyes turning a sweeter shade suddenly, more blue. “I’d do anything to put all that shite behind us, anything. Name it.”

There’s a weird static charge to the air, and then Clarke’s phone glows red-hot enough to make Hades drop it along with a string of cuss words. Persephone materializes with a crack like lightning that makes Bellamy’s ears ring long after its over.

She’s…tiny, like Clarke. Another thing they’ve got in common, then. She's wearing a cute sundress and some serious ass-kicking boots with stiletto heels. 

She walks right over to her estranged husband and socks him square on the jaw. There’s a little trickle of blood coming from his lip, but even so, Hades just seems amused.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” Persephone says, then steps in real close and stretches up onto her tiptoes, fisting her little hand in the front of Hades’ filthy bathrobe to pull him down for a kiss that should not be seen by younger viewers.

Or probably anyone, really.

And there are  _noises_.

The kiss lasts several moments too long to be any kind of comfortable, then, mercifully, the two break apart, eyes shining.

“Christ, I missed you,” Hades says, hoisting Persephone up so she can wrap her legs around his waist. She squeals, arms around his neck. He presses his forehead to hers. “So you’ll come back home, then? Honest?”

“I don’t remember you talkin’ this much before,” Persephone drawls, laying another scorching kiss on him. Bellamy can practically hear the sizzling sound. He wishes he couldn’t. “But yeah, baby, I’m home. I’m home.”

Hades makes a sound that’s both broken and overjoyed, and starts moving in the direction of a hallway Bellamy unfortunately must assume leads to a bedroom.

(He absolutely does not want to think about the make-up sex these two are going to have, nor does he want to think about how long it could last.)

“Uh, aren’t you forgetting something?” Clarke asks, sounding a little crazed.

(And it’s no wonder, given what they’ve just had to bear witness to.)

“Huh?” Hades sounds like he’s eight different kinds of stoned. “Oh, right! You’re free to go. Contract’s up, et cetera. The ferryman’s lad’ll see you back to the mortal realm.”

“Oh. Cool,” Clarke says, her face seemingly frozen in what she’d clearly hoped would be a nonchalant smile. “Um, thanks. Have a good time, guys.”

And without a word, she hauls ass back out the front door, and Bellamy has to jog a little to catch up to her.

When they’re out on the front steps, door shut behind them, Clarke turns to Bellamy, eyes wild.

“ _‘Have a good time guys?’_ ugh, why did I even say that? Who am I?”

He can’t help it, he busts out laughing and has a really, really hard time stopping. The moment replays in his mind, his flustered girlfriend (because they decided that they really aren’t ready to be married, not if they got the chance to live in the real world) trying to play it cool in the face of utter awkwardness and failing hilariously.

“Have a…” he barely gasps out when Miller appears to take them back to the palace where Octavia is waiting on news about the confrontation. “Have a good time, guys!” he practically falls onto Miller, who looks at Clarke for an explanation.

“Hades and Persephone were like, two thirds of the way to foreplay right in front of us. I said,” and she exhales deeply from her nose before continuing, “‘Cool, thanks, have a good time, guys.’ Bellamy thinks it’s funny, I guess.”

Miller makes the same blank face he always does—except, after a beat, he starts laughing too. In fact, it’s the most animated either one of them has ever seen him. Bellamy’s known him his whole life and never seen him crack up like this.

Clarke hides her face in her hands, and the two laughing guys link arms with her as they dematerialize.

  
.

When they get back to the palace, Bellamy patiently waits as Clarke recounts the whole story…up until the point of the line that will forever live on in infamy.

(Octavia laughs so hard she falls off her lounge chair into the pool.)

(She laughs even harder when Clarke realizes that her phone, burned as it may be, is still lying on the floor of Hades’ foyer.)  
  


.

 __  
Epilogue  
  


“I can’t believe we keep getting gifts from them,” Clarke shakes her head, staring at the latest in a long series of extravagant thank-you presents from Persephone and Hades.  
  


She and Bellamy have been living in a slightly larger apartment in the same building she lived in before with Raven, who rooms with Octavia now.

“I told him it was enough that he gave us social security numbers and birth certificates and fake uni diplomas,” Bellamy agrees, sauntering in to see what the gift is this time. “Ooh, chocolates,” he spies the decadent box of artisanal French chocolate and snatches it.

“They’re probably literally insane from all the make-up sex,” Clarke says, shivering. “That’s why they’re sending us all this stuff, they can’t make any judgement calls.”

Bellamy rummages around in the hefty gift basket while Clarke texts Raven and O to let them know there’s snacks ripe for the taking in their kitchen to anyone who wants some.

“Hey, there’s a card in here,” he says, fishing a black envelope out of the bottom. “It’s got your name on it.”

Clarke takes it hesitantly, like she’s afraid it might explode or become a howler like in Harry Potter or something.

There’s a fancy wax seal on it, silvery and pressed with a crest of a pomegranate and a snake.

“I thought he said he wasn’t Catholic,” Bellamy interrupts her train of thought, talking with his mouth full of chocolate. “That’s some very Christian imagery for the seal of a Greek god.”

“Shut up, nerd,” Clarke swats him away as she tears it open.

Inside the envelope is a card, printed on creamy paper and featuring a single pressed flower on the front.

Inside the card is a beautiful, looping cursive that Clarke knows can’t belong to anyone other than Persephone.

_Clarke,_

_I know we’re going overboard with all the thank-yous, but we can’t help it. We’re eternally grateful for getting us back together. We’re so glad to see that y’all are doing so well up there, but there’s some news on our end we wanted to share:_

(Here the handwriting changes into the excited scrawl of either a hyperactive chicken or a sentient yard rake)

**Persephone’s pregnant! We’re over the fucking moon, we are. And it’s thanks to youse, Clarke. Gonna name the little monster Griffin in your honor.**

(It switches back again, this time with a line where the pen was most likely taken by force away from Hades)

_We’re so goddamn happy, Clarke. You’ll have to come down for the party after the baby comes!_

_Love,_

_Persephone +_ **(illegible)**  
  


“Whaaaat the fuck,” Clarke says slowly, handing it to Bellamy.

He reads it, snorting so hard she worries he’ll get chocolate up his sinuses.

“Sounds like they’re naming a permanent reminder of their make-up sex after you, Princess.”

Clarke covers her face and shrieks, laughing and smacking Bellamy’s arm. He tries to defend himself using a wheel of cheese from the basket, but Clarke is quicker than that. There's a scuffle, and they almost ruin a large slab of Edam cheese, which Clarke cradles in her arms like it's her firstborn child, glaring at Bellamy. 

“What’s all the ruckus?” Raven asks, letting herself in. Octavia’s not far behind her.

Bellamy hands them the note, and they all decide to crack open a bottle of wine from the basket.

“To Hades and Persephone’s makeup sex,” Octavia declares, raising her glass just to watch Clarke squirm.

“Fuck you guys,” Clarke says, red in the face but laughing. “I should have left you Blakes down there forever.”

“Oh please,” Octavia scoffs, knocking back her wine. “You love us. I’m pretty sure you love me more than you love Bell.”

Clarke shrugs and half-nods. “This is true,” she agrees.

  
They sit in the kitchen awhile longer before bringing the impromptu party to the living room, and as the afternoon stretches into evening, more of their friends show up to mooch some food and booze and play video games.

Clarke can’t believe that in just a little over a year, her whole world changed so much in so many ways as to be totally unbelievable when it’s all out on paper.

(She had to tell her friends the whole story eventually, if only to explain away the exorbitant gift baskets.)  
  


Bellamy’s working as assistant professor in the History department at the university, and Octavia has enrolled as a sophomore thanks to Persephone’s fake transcripts. She and Lincoln have been known to take spontaneous trips into the mountains or the woods to camp and find specimens for her new journal. Clarke is back at school, but she’s changed her major, finally, and her mom has been learning how to shut up once in awhile.  
  


She looks at Bellamy, who is currently getting his ass handed to him in MarioKart by Monty, and her heart feels like it might explode from how stupidly happy she is.

.

Later, when their friends have gone, leaving a trail of food wrappers and destruction in their wake, Clarke finds herself being lifted up onto the counter and kissed within an inch of her life.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she says between kisses “but what did I do to deserve this particular lavishing of attention?”

Bellamy smiles against her mouth, and it still makes Clarke’s stomach do backflips. He bites her lower lip for good measure.

“Just feeling extra smitten tonight I guess,” he answers, moving to fit himself between her legs, kissing the spot just below her jaw that drives her crazy. “You looked really hot eating all that cheese.”

Clarke snorts, an ungraceful, terribly unsexy noise, and somehow Bellamy is still kissing her.

“Sex and then documentary?” she asks hopefully, feeling how hard he is through his jeans and knowing she’s at least getting one of the two tonight.

“God, you’re perfect,” Bellamy breathes before kissing her again.

They chase each other into the bedroom, laughing and heckling each other like a couple of goons, but once they’re inside with the door shut, Clarke can’t seem to make a sound that isn’t Bellamy’s name.

  
  
(They don’t make it to the documentary right away in favor of an encore.)

  
  
  
  
  
Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well! I didn't think this would get finished today, but, well, here it is! Thanks for reading, and let me know what you thought in the comments! 
> 
> (I definitely made Hades and Persephone into a cameo of my doomed ship Tulip O'Hare and Cassidy from Preacher. I'm nowhere near as ashamed of myself as I should be)
> 
> <3 
> 
> I'd like to write some extras later on about how Bellamy and Octavia react to the mortal realm and not being able to use magic, etc.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first work in the 100 fandom. I love Bellarke, and I love Persephone!AUs, so I thought I'd try my hand. The title comes from the Skye Boat song them of Outlander, and I would love any feedback on this! I'm normally a Stucky writer through and through, and this gives me a chance to try out a different narrative voice. <3


End file.
